Schofield drops the paranormal elements that made his first two thrillers (Storm Rising, 2016, etc.) hyphenated creatures for the more earthbound tale of a Homeland Security agent fighting a vicious baby-laundering operation.Make that relatively earthbound, since the story hits the ground running and swiftly develops surrealistically multilayered complications. After cutting abruptly away from Lisa May Green, who's survived a fatal car crash only to be imprisoned by Roland Lewis, the fiance she has no memory of, Schofield focuses on Sarah Lockhart, a Customs and Border Protection officer posted to Sicily to help the local Guardia di Finanza and Immigration people screen ships carrying questionable mercantile and human cargo. At least that's what she thinks she'll be doing until she's pulled more and more insistently into investigating a series of crimes way outside her bailiwick: the smuggling of infant refugees whose counterfeit papers have laundered them thoroughly enough to be adopted by wealthy, influential Americans like Kenneth and Darlene Eden. Forming a series of remarkably fluid tag-team alliances with U.N. official Renate Richter, private security specialist Conrad Nelthorp, Florida Detective Scott Jardine, and her current line manager and former supervisor, Phyllis Corbin, Sarah follows the adoption trail to New Jersey Mafia boss Dominic Lanza and Sicilian mobsters Antonio and Gustavo Mazzara and soon finds that she can account for only 41 of the 42 babies smuggled into the United States and that sometimes mob bosses are more reliable allies than employees of the U.S. government. All this is every bit as complicated as it sounds, especially when you throw in Sarah's painfully recurring memories of her grandmother's nightmarish World War II experience, her getting framed for the murders of the Edens, and the case of Lisa May Green (remember her?). Muscular, overplotted intrigue that will have some readers checking their blood pressures and others their wristwatches. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Schofield (Storm Rising) enlivens a standard plot about a framed law-enforcement agent with some uncommon elements. In early 2015, amnesiac Lisa Green, who was in a car crash two months earlier, recovers her memory in Florida's Everglades City. She realizes that she has been held prisoner for weeks, by a man purporting to be her boyfriend, and that she is in fact Laura Pace, an undercover Customs and Border Protection officer. Flash back to the previous year. Under an alias, Laura travels to Sicily, where she uncovers an illegal international adoption scheme operating between the island and Miami. Those responsible for the crime frame her for the murder of a couple in Miami and attempt to dispose of her by engineering the car crash. With her memory restored, Laura is determined to clear her name, bring the guilty parties to justice, and find a missing baby. Laura recruits an unusual group of allies, who range from members of a shadowy U.N. intelligence unit to a mobster from Schofield's previous novel. It's to Schofield's credit that a potential romance remains only that. Readers will eagerly await his next mystery. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This woman gets one socko introduction. Moving with sinuous grace, she walks in with something of the wild about her. The man senses he's in the presence of a mysterious, subterranean intellect. A few pages later, a scumbag pulls a gun on this panther lady. She winds up with the gun, and he with a broken wrist. Readers wanting more of this wonder woman will have mixed reactions when they learn she's a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officerstationed in Sicily to institute Container Security Initiative protocols. The slabs of bureaucratic jargon that follow are as dispiriting as that sounds. Things perk up when the author introduces a child-trafficking story, but then what should be an emotion-laden account Why were these people killed? What happened to the baby? Why does nobody seem to care? reads instead like an interoffice memo. Occasionally the panther lady gets to show her stuff, along with some spunky dialogue, and, along the way, the author displays real narrative skill. But the problem of pace remains. More of that sinuous grace would have helped.--Crinklaw, Don Copyright 2017 Booklist