What’s a kid to do when her father is the police chief and her mother is a 911 dispatcher for the same department? Really, so many of the cops in the station know JoJo and consider her to be a part of their cop family that she may just as well have grown up inside the police station. That means that whatever she gets into outside the home is quickly going to get back to her parents. But the time that JoJo and her best friend Harper were caught trying to steal from a jewelry store, they were only fourteen years old so they were able to put a bad situation behind them without ruining the rest their lives. Now, however, the girls are both 16, and the trouble they are flirting with is a whole lot more dangerous than stealing something from a jewelry store. The girls do not look like kids anymore, and the wrong kind of men have noticed.
JoJo’s mother has been a 911 operator for almost twenty years so not much surprises her anymore. But that changes on the day Laurie answers a 911-call only to recognize that the voice on the other end of the line pleading for help belongs to her own daughter. JoJo cannot move, does not know where she is, and has no idea how she got there. Even worse, JoJo cannot figure out what happened to her before or while she was unconscious, but the pain she is in indicates that she may have been raped. And then JoJo remembers that Harper was with her – but now Harper is nowhere to be found.
JoJo’s police family pulls out all the stops to figure out what happened to her and Harper and to catch the people responsible. And JoJo would expect nothing less of them. But do they really?
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| Author Rachel Herron |
JoJo Ahmadi is as impatient as she is smart – and she’s very smart. So, when the cops don’t seem to be making much progress, she decides to do a little investigating of her own. And what she learns from a deep dive into Harper’s social media scares her to death. Harper, it appears, was a little too cozy with some of the cops for her own good, and now JoJo and her mother don’t know whom to trust. Which cops are playing it straight, and which ones have good reason to make sure that Harper is never found? Just what are they willing to do to keep JoJo and her mother from learning the truth?
R.H. Herron’s novel is a solid thriller that pushes all the proper socially-conscious buttons. There are gay characters, characters questioning their sexuality, racist cops, plain old bad cops, a black NFL quarterback speaking out about the way blacks are mistreated by the criminal justice system, and a group of protesters preparing to take to the streets again to protest police brutality (a group, as it turns out, that JoJo and Harper have themselves joined). Stolen Things is definitely a thriller with a social message, but that message at times can get heavy-handed enough to be a distraction to the book’s central plot. Still, this is a page-turner that crime thriller fans should take a look at.
Advance Reading Copy provided by Dutton for review purposes
I hate when authors get heavy-handed with messages involving their own political or social views. But this does sound like a very compelling read. And I do like a good thriller.
ReplyDeleteThere is an author's note at the end of the book in which Herron introduces herself as "a queer, white middle-class woman." She also says in it that "policing in America is broken in deep systemic ways: and that she supports Black Lives Matter by "lifting my voice when I can from my particular place of privilege."
ReplyDeleteSo, it's obvious where she's coming from and that the plot directly reflects her beliefs. I tend to tune out when I start hearing so many buzz-words, so it's a good thing that I'm glad I didn't stumble upon the note before reading the novel. I really don't care what her beliefs are - its her book, not mine - but it all gets very tedious sometimes.