James Hunt, author of The Forgotten Children, is the kind of writer who knows the story he wants to tell, but hasn’t worked out yet how to tell it. The story itself kept me reading, but the writing had me tearing my hair.
Jim North is a Seattle police detective who, with his partner Kerry Martin, works missing persons cases. The worst are the missing kid cases. When they’re called out to a family home one morning, the scene is doubly bad – the two parents have been shot to death, while their son – a foster child they’d been in the process of adopting – has disappeared.
But it gets worse. Soon there are two more double murders, with attempts to abduct the children – though one child escapes. What links them together is that all the children were adopted from a particular local orphanage. When Jim and Kerry arrive there, they encounter defensiveness and veiled hostility from most of the staff.
For Jim, cases like this are personal. He was himself a foster child and carries great bitterness about the things he suffered in the system. When his birth father – who was an evil man – died and left him a fortune, Jim entrusted the money to a foundation for foster kids, the management of which he leaves to its staff.
Jim’s empathy for the kids helps him identify clues that will in time lead them to a shocking truth.
Author Hunt is clearly passionate about his subject. But the story would have been more effective with better writing. His major failing, in my opinion, is overwriting. Like many insecure writers, he doesn’t trust the reader to take a hint. He has to lay everything out, then explain it again to make sure we get it. The characters’ personalities are described rather than demonstrated through words and actions (though, annoyingly, very little physical description is provided). The phraseology is often awkward, as in “And their city was just one cog in the giant wheel churning orphans through a revolving door.” Also, the dialogue was pretty stilted – even awkwardly theatric in the dramatic scenes.
Also, the author handled the solution in an odd way – the true culprit turned out to be no surprise at all, though there was a surprise twist afterward.
But… I did read The Forgotten Children all the way through. So the book wasn’t a narrative failure. All things considered, though, I don’t recommend it very highly.
Connor Connolly, 16, didn’t actually want to be at the party deep in the woods, because that crowd never accepted him. His only friend talks him into it, but after a couple conversations, he leaves. That puts him nearby as a murderer drags a child away to her death. He tries to intervene, gets stabbed, and wakes up a few minutes later with alien wristbands that grant enhanced abilities.
The Second Wave picks up a few months after the first book with some observations on the practicalities of superness. Many new people have Meta bands now, and many of them don’t want to do hero work. Connor continues to make a name for himself as Omni by spotting these new criminals and taking them down efficiently. 
