Vanished

February 20, 2006
Bestseller Robards (Superstition
) opens her latest romantic thriller with a bang by placing her heroine, assistant district attorney Sarah Mason of Beaufort County, S.C., in the midst of a convenience store robbery gone wrong. A cashier is shot to death, Mason is wounded in the head and a young girl, who was hiding in the store during the gunplay, vanishes. Mason, who has thrown herself into her work with a vengeance since the disappearance of her five-year-old daughter, Lexie, 10 years earlier, becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. The action rarely lets up, except for the many sexually charged scenes devoted to Mason's initially platonic relationship with PI Jake Hogan, "the closest thing to family" she has left, who worked as a detective on Lexie's case and who routinely comes to her rescue during this new case. The plot, with its suggestions that the holdup was not a random act and eerie phone calls apparently from a Lexie who hasn't aged, will keep readers turning the pages. Author tour.