Please tell me

In this bracing thriller, Omer (Spider's Web) traces the fallout from a nine-year-old girl's abduction. Young Kathy Stone has been missing for 18 months when she's found wandering the streets miles from her home in Bethelville, Ind. Kathy has stopped speaking, and begins working with child psychologist Robin Hart soon after she's reunited with her family. During one of her sessions, Kathy uses dolls to perfectly mimic a series of recent murders; soon, she's acting out the details of brutal killings before they happen. Dr. Hart calls in the police, who begin to fear that she and Kathy are being watched by whoever's committing the crimes. With Kathy still refusing to speak, authorities team up with her parents to figure out who abducted her, why, and whether that person has come back to finish what they started. Omer's no-nonsense prose, though occasionally clumsy, allows his proficient plotting to take center stage: every character, major or minor, registers as a plausible suspect at some point, and when the solution to the mystery finally arrives, it doesn't disappoint. The result is a haunting and propulsive hair-raiser. Agent: Sarah Hershman, Hershman Rights Management. (Nov.)

The vital clues to a serial killer's identity are locked inside the brain of a child unable to speak. How do you treat a 9-year-old who escaped from a kidnapper more than a year after he snatched her and has gone mute? Kathy Stone's mother, Claire, is lucky enough to have an old friend, Robin Hart, who's a child therapist. So Robin begins sessions with Kathy, watches her play with figures in a dollhouse, affirms her by describing the scenarios she's creating, and waits for her to work through the trauma that's rendered her speechless. As the sessions go on, Kathy's games suggest that her memories are intertwined with the murder of influencer Haley Parks, who was stabbed and hanged in Clark State Forest two weeks earlier. Now Robin has a dilemma. She wants to share this information with Det. Nathaniel King, of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, but she can't violate her bond of confidentiality with her patient, even though Kathy's father, accountant Pete Stone, is eager to have the police question Kathy directly. Kathy doesn't regain her voice, but as she begins to act out a widening range of violent fantasies, Robin realizes that she's recreating the scenes of several other murders as well--including at least one that didn't take place until after Kathy was rescued. Whatever she witnessed during the 15 months of her captivity, how can she possibly predict a crime that hadn't happened yet? Even as he shifts gears from one set of riddles and anxieties to the next, Omer keeps the tension consistently high enough to prod you into reading just one more chapter. A masterful melding of everyday domestic suburban fears with serial-killer thrills. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.