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After seeing a child fall off a ferry in Lake Champlain, Troy Chance jumps into the lake's chilly water – and into a mystery. She saves the child, whose arms were bound up when – Troy now deduces – he was thrown overboard. The boy, Paul, speaks only French and is reluctant to talk. But eventually he opens up, telling Troy that he and his mother were kidnapped and his mother killed. His father, he says, doesn't want anything to do with him. Mysteriously, there's been no mention of a kidnapping in the news. Troy, who has previously worked with abused children, decides not to take him to the police right away. Instead, she will take care of Paul for a few days. Later, she decides to find out more about his father, a path that will lead from Lake Placid, where she lives, to Ottawa – and to danger. For a debut, this is a masterful thriller. Henry hooks the reader from the very first lines: "If I'd blinked, I would have missed it. But I didn't, and I saw something fall from the rear deck of the opposite ferry … a small wide-eyed human face, in one tiny frozen moment as it plummeted toward the water." The story is a cross between the thrillers of Michael Robotham (whom Henry thanks in the acknowledgments) and the gothic sensibility of Daphne du Maurier's REBECCA. Troy Chance is a very likable heroine – independent and tough, at times; maternal and unsure in romance at other times. If there's any weakness in LEARNING TO SWIM, it is that part of the ending is telegraphed earlier. Still, even with that, the author manages to keep the tension high. Be warned: If you pick this book up, it'll be a long while before you come up for a breath. § Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, August 2011
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