Sherry Moore becomes embroiled in her most perilous and disturbing case to date and finds that the lives of hundreds of women hang in the balance.Sherry Moore would do anything for her confidant and best friend, retired Admiral Garland Bringham. So when he suddenly asks her to assist a team of U.S. Navy SEALs in a daring high-altitude rescue on Mount McKinley, she doesn't hesitate and soon finds herself flying across the country to hang vertically off an Alaskan cliff, tethered to Captain Brian Metcalf. Sherry, renowned for her ability to see the last eighteen seconds of a deceased person's memory, takes the hand of a dead climber, hoping to ascertain the whereabouts of his missing climbing team. But what she sees leaves her with visions that will haunt her long past Alaska.
While rumors of slave girls being trafficked around the Caribbean have circulated for years, little credible evidence has been uncovered about these "lost girls." When detective inspector Rolly King George recovers the body of a young blond woman, naked except for a shocking tattoo branded onto her cheek, he knows she may hold the key to toppling this criminal underworld. Through delicate back-channel negotiations, Sherry arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, to see the deceased and finds that things are more complicated than she thought: the remains are of Jill Bishop, an American teenager last seen in a Santo Domingo marketplace.
Carol Bishop, relentless in her pursuit to find out how her daughter died, and Sherry, the distressing images from Mount McKinley still fresh in her memory, embark on a frantic hunt for clues from the Domincan Republic to the remote jungles of Haiti, racing against time to save others from Jill's fate. Along the way, Sherry must confront a legendary voodoo priest, who possesses abilities eerily similar to her own, and take on a man whose depraved practices give new meaning to the word evil.
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While in the Dominican Republic young and rich Jill Bishop is kidnapped, tortured and gang-raped, Sherry Moore is called to help to locate a group of missing climbers that were surprised by a storm.
With her ability to see the last 18 seconds of what a dead person was thinking she touches the body of a dead man who tried to leave coordinates painted on a wall for rescue teams to find his team.
The group is found but Sherry's horror-stricken by what else she saw: broken and tortured women, a one eyed man hovering over them and leaving a tattoo on their face.
More surprisingly she later learns the background of this man who was running away from his father's legacy.
When Jill sees the chance to end her life with a jump out of a flying planes door and into the ocean, she is watched by a senior investigator on holiday who happened to be part of a convention talking about human trafficking issues and exactly the tattoo he finds on Jill's dead body.
Hiding the dead body he makes the right calls to the right man who bring back Sherry to touch Jill's memory.
It is a race against time and law, bringing to strong women together, leading them into a nightmare.
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Lost Girls is the most impressing book I've read this year. I literally couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. Shuman like in his previous novels doesn't make Sherry the main attraction but the person connecting the dots and people.
Human trafficking has never been such visible and graphic for me. I mean I knew about it but did I really think about it ? I doubt it.
I had the shivers, I got frightened just by suggestions and my own imagination.
It's not easy to digest if you can't let go of what you think about and what your imagination shows you but if you do you are in for ride you won't forget easily.
I haven't forgotten my doubts after I read the first Sherry Moore novel, 18 Seconds, along came Last Breath which was quite good.
But Lost Girls leaves me with three words:
Excellent, frightening and unforgettable.
Rating:
Visit George D. Shuman.
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 16, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416553010
ISBN-13: 978-1416553014
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