LOST GIRLS: A Sherry Moore Novel
George D. Shuman
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
ISBN: 9781416553014
18 SECONDS and LAST BREATH were the first two books in George D. Shuman’s suspense series, and LOST GIRLS is sure to expand his growing fan base. Sherry Moore was blinded at a young age, but her sight was replaced with a gift that allows her to “see” the last 18 seconds of a dying person’s thoughts. By touching the individual, she is often able to understand what he or she was thinking or seeing just before death. Though wanting to keep a low profile, her talent has become known to law enforcement, and she has been called upon to help solve difficult cases.
Sherry’s good friend and father figure, retired Admiral Garland Brigham, asks her to travel to Mt. McKinley to assist Navy SEALS in the rescue of a group of hikers. While on the face of the snow-packed mountain, she grasps the hand of a climber who has already succumbed to the storm. Immediately she is able to see his last thoughts, and the vision of his final 18 seconds leads Sherry into a perilous adventure that may claim her very life. The last 18 seconds of the young man who died on the treacherous slopes of frozen Mt. McKinley triggered in Sherry the nightmares that led to an investigation of one of the world’s most horrific criminal networks.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, three other young women are headed for a place in that same adventure. Aleksandra Goralski is a warrant officer with the Polish police force. Jill Bishop is a teenager visiting ashore while on a cruise with her sister and parents. And a nameless young Russian girl is lured aboard a freighter with promises of a good job in America. All are destined to meet in a chamber of horrors, enslaved to those who traffic in human beings.
Shuman has tackled a little-known criminal activity that is flourishing in several countries around the world: sex tourism. It seems to have grown as a result of the Russians moving from trading black market arms to trading humans, specifically young women who are seduced with promises of a better life in foreign countries. But instead of luxury yachts or cruise ships, they find themselves in the stinking hold of a freighter with nothing but darkness, dread and the bodies of others like themselves, some of whom failed to survive the journey and are left to decompose where they lay.
The story of these lost girls is enriched with documentation born of thorough research. Haiti’s “dark age,” ushered in by Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the ’60s, was perfect for drug trafficking and the human trafficking that followed. His bloody legacy was passed on to his son, “Baby Doc,” and later to his philosophical offspring that included Jean Bedard and Thiago Mendoza. The frozen body that led Sherry into this investigation was that of Sergio Mendoza, reluctant heir to their terrible throne.
Discounting any danger to themselves, Sherry Moore and Carol Bishop, the mother of one of the lost girls, risk their lives to uncover this nest of human vipers and to put an end to their ghastly business. LOST GIRLS is a compelling human drama, told no holds barred by a dynamic storyteller.
--- Reviewed by Maggie Harding, a substance abuse counselor in Phoenix, AZ who wanted to be Brenda Starr before life intervened. She reviews for www.bookreporter.com, www.faithfulreader.com, and www.livinglightnews.com. To contact Maggie, e-mail Magster2@cox.net.
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