Touch & Go by Lisa Gardner

Lisa Gardner is one of my favorite authors.  Her books always pull me in and move really quickly, so you read 450 pages and don't even realize how long it's been.  This one involves a wealthy family, kidnapping, drug abuse, corporate scandal, and a lot of suspense.

The Denbe family has been abducted.  Justin Denbe, the father, owns Denbe Construction which is a $100 million dollar company.  Their family is very wealthy and lives in a nice area of Boston.  The kidnappers took all 3 family members, Justin, his wife Libby, and his daughter Ashlyn.  The police, FBI, and a private investigator hired by Denbe Construction are all on the case.  The family was is taken by 3 captors, and held at a prison that Denbe built but never went operational in the middle of the woods.  They have kidnapping insurance, so the FBI is waiting for the ransom call.  Meanwhile the family is dealing with the 3 captors who are obviously professionals.  In digging into the family, they find that the husband has been cheating and the wife is addicted to pain killers.  So the family isn't as perfect as it seems.  Add into that the problems the company is facing (Justin hasn't pulled a salary in 16 months) and the list of people there that could benefit from Justin's death and it all starts to get interesting.  There is also embezzlement going on within the company, and the authorities are trying to determine whether that's a separate or related incident.

I can't say much more without giving things away, but there is a lot that makes this story interesting.  Gardner always has multiple twists, and spreads them throughout the book.  It keeps the reading going because as soon as you think you have something figured out, a plot twist occurs and you're sucked back into the story to try to determine what's going on.  At the heart of the story is the Denbe family.  The mother has been abusing pain killers since she learned of the affair, the father feels guilty and is trying to repair the family, and the daughter is feeling ignored and has the typical 15 year old teen angst.  So while you are reading about the FBI trying to solve the crime, you're also rooting for this family to get their lives back together.  The fact that the story had an emotional pull as well as suspense made it even better.  I highly recommend it, as well as any other Lisa Gardner book!

<3, jacq