Wednesday's Child

Wednesday's Child is the third novella of Carl Douglass's McGee series. It is a tale of "Wednesday's child is full of woe." Brigid O'Hanlon--age thirteen--is one of the "Wednesday's Children"--a foundling left on the doorstep of St. Anne's Orphanage in Red Hook, New York. One of the few days she and her girl-friends can count is the grand and city-wide heralded celebration of their thirteenth birthday. Harm befalls them, and McGee and Associates are called to help save them on a pro bono basis. The search transcends city, then country boundaries, and then on the high seas. The Human Trafficking division of the NYPD is called into the search after bodies are found in the pestilent Gowanus Canal near a semi-trailer containing the bodies of victims of a human trafficking network run by the Snakeheads. The hunt for the girls and for the clever and heartless monsters who killed their vulnerable captives descends into an underworld of CIs, Mafiosos, crooked Teamsters, and child molesters, presided over by the ephemeral devil, Sister Chi. The combined resources of McGee, the NYPD task force, the New Jersey State Police, the FBI, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, the CIA, and the Catholics of NYC, and The MSS and the PSB of the Peoples Republic of China join in an around-the-world and around-the-clock manhunt for the rust bucket ship, the Golden Traveler, and the kidnappers. It promises to be very close and dangerous thing.