|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
In THE STOLEN ONES, author Owen Laukkanen presents a frightening scenario involving an international sex trafficking ring. Irina, a young woman from Romania, meets an American named Mike, who lures her into coming to America by the promise of a better life. Her little sister Catalina follows her, and both become prisoners in a dark, stinking shipping container filled with other terrified women. When they get to the States, they are placed in trucks, hosed down, and taken to be sold.
Rick Stevens, an agent for his state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, becomes involved in this dangerous case when the older sister manages to escape from the truck at a rest stop in rural Minnesota. When a sheriff's deputy, who just happened to be at the diner, becomes suspicious of the truck, Irina's captors kill him as they flee. Irina had grabbed the deputy's gun when he fell and she is taken into custody as the killer. She speaks no English, and is scared of all men. Eventually the authorities begin to piece together her story. Stevens is on vacation in the remote Minnesota area where this occurs, and is called in to help. He in turn enlists the aid of another agent, his partner in the new joint BCA-FBI violent crimes task force, Carla Windermere. She is an attractive woman he has worked with in the past, but they are not romantically involved. She is seeing another officer named Mather, who helps out with the case but seems to be a bit of a bungler.
Irina is eventually brought to a safe house, but she is obsessed with finding her younger sister Catalina, about whose fate she feels great guilt. She is correct to be worried. The men who have taken her and the rest of the girls are a terrifying bunch of amoral criminals. They treat the women as sex toys and objects to be used and discarded. The mastermind of this enterprise is a man nicknamed The Dragon, who carries a long curved knife at his waist. A man named Volovoi works for him, and is directly in charge of the trucks bringing girls around the country to various buyers. The Dragon wants Volovoi, who owes him money, to concentrate on the more lucrative trade in very young girls that is centered in New York City. This repels Volovoi, but as he grows more desperate with the FBI closing in on him, he agrees to this plan. Catalina is the one girl singled out to be taken to The Dragon because of the problems her sister's escape has caused them.
The thriller moves back and forth between the efforts of the agents to follow the trail of the captured girls and the attempts of the kidnappers to maintain their business. The sex traders are vile and the young women so clueless that the reader is pulled along with the action, hoping that all will be well before more horror is perpetrated. There are a number of coincidences in the chase that seem improbable, with paths crossing in unexpected ways and escapes that seem unbelievable. But all in all, Laukkanen has written an engrossing book about a subject that is more real than we might wish.
§Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, March 2015
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
