DS Mickey Dolan's marriage ended when his wife, Jennifer, left him for another woman, and he's got several excessive force complaints against him in his disciplinary file. Now he just wants to do the job and stay off the brass's radar. After Edwin Royster, whose influence in the police department is as well known as his violent tendencies, reports his wife, Cassie, and their two daughters missing, Dolan suspects Cassie is on the run with the girls. Ford (Chump Change) alternates between Dolan's investigation and the exploits of Grace Pressman, who has the ability—and readers must be willing to suspend their disbelief here—to coax patients out of long-term comas. Grace and her mother, Eve, run the Women's Transitional Center, a shelter for victims of domestic violence. It soon becomes clear to Dolan that Grace and Eve are complicit in Cassie Royster's "disappearance." With echoes of the moral decision that Patrick Kenzie grappled with in Dennis Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone, the story becomes less about the stark divide between right and wrong and more about the gray area in between. VERDICT Despite a somewhat clichéd setup, Ford tells a darkly compelling story of desperate people and forces us to think about how far we'd go to protect those we love.

Ford (Chump Change) turns the traditional cops vs. robbers conflict on its head in this well-written thriller set in a nameless city. Grace Pressman has the ability to bring patients in comas back to the world of the conscious. Her mother, Eve Pressman, runs the Women's Transitional Center, a haven for battered women that's willing to flout the law for the safety of women and their children. The center's most recent rescued family is Cassie Royster and her school-age daughters, Tessa and Maddy. The girls' father, Edwin Royster, a city councilman with enough clout to have sealed the court testimony of his daughters' detailed description of their abuse at his hands, thinks the center helped them disappear. Royster wants Det. Sgt. Mickey Dolan to locate Tessa and Maddy, but Dolan is unwilling to return them to an abuser like Royster. Ford skillfully balances portraits of the players while painting in gray the blurry lines between duty and morality. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency. (Apr.)