It’s common to find “extreme” thrillers on bookshelves today. Usually that means extreme in terms of action – improbably indestructible heroes taking damage that would permanently cripple lesser men, ripping drip lines out of their arms and escaping hospitals, and dominating climactic showdowns against impossible odds amid large explosions.
Alex Smith’s Paper Girls is extreme in a different way. It’s extreme on the interior level, driving its hero to the limits of his emotional resources (before he nearly gets killed in a fight).
Detective Chief Inspector Robert Kett is a London policeman on compassionate leave; he’s moved temporarily to Norwich to decompress and spend time with his three daughters, one of them a baby. Famed for his skill as a finder off missing persons, he’s tormented by the fact that he couldn’t locate his own wife, who has been kidnapped.
His down time is interrupted, though, when his boss calls and asks him for a favor. The local police in Norwich need help with a pair of kidnappings. Two eleven-year-old girls, who made money delivering newspapers, have been snatched. Everyone knows that after the first few hours, chances of discovering the victims alive sink to almost zero.
Personally, I don’t think I’d have put up with the guff Kett takes when he shows up to help. His temporary boss, rather than being grateful, is openly insulting and uses him as a scapegoat when things go wrong (though he’s a layered character; I like that in a book). And Kett has more than enough on his hands trying to care for his traumatized girls. But he doesn’t quit because he cares deeply; he can’t help himself thinking about what the victims are suffering. He can’t help believing that if he can find these girls, maybe he can find his wife too.
The detective work was pretty plausible. The characters were very good. Paper Girls was almost too intense for me – I have a hard time dealing with kidnapping stories in general. But I stayed with it and was glad I did. There was a cliff-hanger at the end, but the author played fair.
Male readers will enjoy the suspense and the action. Female readers will enjoy seeing a man find out what women have to do all day. I highly recommend Paper Girls. Cautions for language and mature subject matter.