Taken by Dinuka McKenzie

Title: Taken

Author: Dinuka McKenzie

Genre: Crime

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 1^st February 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 336

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: A parent’s worst nightmare. A case that’s too close to home. The tense, must-read new Detective Kate Miles novel from the award-winning author of The Torrent.

‘I was in the shower. I left Sienna in her bassinet …When I got out … She was gone.’

Detective Sergeant Kate Miles is back from maternity leave and struggling on multiple fronts – the pressures of a second child, financial strain from her husband losing his job, and a corruption scandal that may involve her father.

When an infant goes missing, Kate finds herself fronting a high-profile and emotionally fraught case. Was baby Sienna removed from her bassinet by an unknown abductor or is the answer much closer to home?

Amidst a frenzied media demanding answers, and a station chief looking for any reason to remove her from the investigation, Kate is pushed to her limits, pulled between the competing demands of the family at the centre of the case and her own spiralling personal life.

‘Thrilling, yes. Action-packed, absolutely. Most importantly, though, utterly moving. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as connected to a character as I am to Kate Miles, who is now, I’m happy to say, my favourite fictional detective. Dinuka McKenzie will have you feverishly turning pages, mark my words.’ Ben Hobson

‘A brilliant follow-up to The Torrent, this book should be top of your reading list for 2023. McKenzie takes readers into a dark, labyrinthine maze of secrets and lies: everyone seems to be guilty of something, but does it mean they’re criminals? This intense, twisty mystery will have you hooked from the start.’ Katherine Kovacic

~*~

When Detective Sergeant Kate Miles returns from maternity leave after having her daughter, Amy, three months earlier, she is thrown headfirst into the case of a missing infant – Sienna Ricci. At the same time, she’s dealing with a new baby, a son who wants her around, and a husband in financial trouble, as well as a scandal involving her father, not to mention people at work who seem to think she can’t cope with getting on with her job. But the case of missing Sienna will test Kate in new ways – different ways to the first book, whilst still referring back to the events of The Torrent. The case is fraught with emotions – from Sienna’s mother and father, Elissa’s mother, and Kate’s own family as she tries to juggle finding out what happened to Sienna and why, whilst trying to be there for her family and keep the scandal snapping at her heels at bay.

As the media storm engulfs the investigation into what happened to Sienna and threatens to ruin things for Kate, her family, and her job, everyone becomes a suspect, and it seems that the only person willing to look at all kinds of possibilities is Kate- Josh and Skinner have made up their minds and are determined to pursue one line of enquiry through tunnel vision as they focus on a singular suspect without daring to look at any other possibilities as Kate wants to do. And it is Kate’s instinct that is right – there is much more to Sienna’s disappearance than meets the eye – as with any good mystery that sets up the red herrings and clues that lead us to the outcome – and the best outcomes are the ones where it isn’t what it seems. This story is full of twists and turns and unravels so many threads that need to be unravelled as far as possible before we can come to the end of the story and find out what really happened.

I was sent this to review, and it is the first Dinuka McKenzie book I have read – and I was glad that I could read it without having read the first, as the things we need to know that came out in The Torrent are referred to in enough detail to understand the background of everything, though now I am keen to read The Torrent as well. This thrilling book has a good pace and it kept me enthralled as I had to find out what happened and find out what layers there were to the story – how it all played out in the end. Each part of the story built on what had come before, and this made it complex and allowed for each layer to be played out as it needed to be at the right time. Every bit of information was delivered as we needed to know about it and I think this worked well for the story and works well in the genre. It’s a very good book and one that I think fans of Dinuka’s will enjoy.