Torn-Chris Jordan

Torn
Chris Jordan
Mira, Feb 2009, $6.99
ISBN 9780778325758

In Humble, New York, Police Chief Leo Gannett gives the elementary school students a DARE talk. Roland Penny enters the school and shoots the cop in the head. He informs the teachers and students he has a bomb. Through cell phones pictures and text messages get to the outside until a smoke bomb is set off. Teacher Irene Delancey tells her favorite student ten year old Noah Corbin to hide in the air duct. Soon afterward all the hostages except Noah are free when the building explodes.

Six weeks later, Noah’s mother widow Haley is the only one who believes her son is alive and was abducted by his powerful paternal grandfather Arthur Conklin and his Rulers. Everyone else assumes he died in the blast as some blood of his was found. She hires retired FBI agent Randall Shane whose life mission is rescuing children, but he refuses to take on the job without checking out a few things as he doubts the lad still lives. Not long afterward though he still has doubts, he agrees to take on the hunt as too many anomalies starting with the DNA lab losing Noah’s tissue remains and Mrs. Delancey missing and being a Wall St. roller just before teaching at Humble Elementary. If the kid lives, he is somewhere inside the compound near Conklin, Colorado; a place with tighter security than the White House has.

The third Randall Shane child rescue thriller (see TAKEN and TRAPPED) is T for terrific as his investigation with some help from his FBI friends begins tearing apart a splintering cult’s abduction of the dying founder's grandson. The story line is action-packed even before the hero appears and never slows down as the final confrontation occurs. Although the climax is over the top of the Rocky Mountains where it occurs, fans will enjoy Shane’s latest caper as he gets his usual no sleep while wondering will he come back this time.

Harriet Klausner