Unsafe Haven
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A chance meeting on the New York subway leads to the destinies of two very different women becoming intertwined with terrifying consequences in this nerve-jangling thriller.
Sixteen-year-old Addison is on the run. She’s leaving her life on New York’s streets behind for a new one with Rafe, armed with just his phone number on a scrap of paper. She’s taking the subway to meet him in New Jersey. He’ll take care of her. Or so she thinks . . .
Elizabeth Brown’s world has fallen apart and she’s thinking about her newly ex-fiancé. Until she locks eyes with a teenage girl while waiting for the train doors to open, and a bundle is thrust into her arms as she leaves the subway. A baby, wrapped in a dirty coat.
Elizabeth phones the number she finds in the coat pocket. Then wishes she hadn’t. Someone wants Addison and the baby. And they’ll do whatever it takes to get them . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Early in this uneven standalone from Burdette (the Key West Food Critic mysteries), New York City med student Elizabeth Brown is feeling sorry for herself after being dumped by her fiancé when a teenage girl approaches her outside a subway station and hands her a bundle containing a newborn. The girl enjoins Elizabeth to take care of the baby before fleeing. Elizabeth delivers the baby to the authorities, but moved by the abandoned child's plight, she gets involved in a search for the mother. Meanwhile, the mother, 16-year-old Addy, tries to meet up with the baby's father and evade the violent wrath of Georgia, the woman she fled who pimped Addy out and has plans of her own for the infant. Burdette raises a fascinating policy question—what are the parameters of safe haven laws written to protect unwanted newborns—but fails to explore whether Addy's hand off to a stranger should be covered by such laws. Contrived plot developments and sloppiness with details, such as calling the NYPD "the Metro police," don't help. The author's cozies show she's capable of better.
