Taken (A Jo Birmingham Thriller)

by Niamh O'Connor

A beautiful woman
Model and it-girl Tara Parker Trench is famous across Ireland - with her beauty, glittering lifestyle and perfectthree-year-old son Presley, she seems to have it all.

A stolen child
Until, one cold wet Dublin night, Tara pulls into a service station for petrol, leaving Presley strapped into the back of her car. Five minutes later he's gone, kidnapped while his mother's back was turned.

A hidden world
Tara, terrified and hysterical, begs DI Jo Birmingham to help her find her child. But why doesn't Tara want the public to know he's missing? Soon, Jo is drawn into a dark underworld of corruption and extortion, where sex is a commodity, and life is cheap. Who is really telling Jo the truth about the missing little boy- and who's got too much to hide?

A gripping crime novel, with an unforgettable heroine - welcome to the dark side of Dublin's Fair City

• ISBN10: 1848270836
• ISBN13: 9781848270831
• Publish Date: 26 April 2012 (first published 26 May 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: IE
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Imprint: Transworld Ireland
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Taken is Niamh O’Connor’s second fiction novel and also appears to be the second novel to feature DI Jo Birmingham. (I haven’t read the first.) I decided to read it on a whim, wanting something a bit different to Chick Lit and considering it’s been aaaages since I read a crime novel, I was intrigued by the Prologue of Taken, after a little boy is (aptly) taken at a petrol station.

However despite finishing the novel relatively quickly, it was actually (sadly) a pretty forgettable novel. I read it with no real enthusiasm or suspense, but more it seemed as if I just got so far in that I felt I may as well finish it. There just seemed to be so much going on with so many different people, that I could barely keep up with everyone we were meant to be keeping up with. Don’t get me wrong, I expect that with crime novels, but it just seemed there were just too many characters and it would have been miles easier to get rid of a couple, particularly all the “bad guys”.

Whenever I read a Tess Gerritsen novel, I’m guaranteed suspense, guaranteed my heart will be racing as the novel reaches it’s climax, but with Taken it was all very pedestrian. It’s a shame, really, it has some characters who were interesting (Jo’s partner, whose name escapes me with his dead wife was interesting) but I just felt the book fell somewhat flat. So O’Connor probably won’t make it onto my “Crime must-read list” but, well, I don’t necessarily regret reading it, I just wish it was more suspenseful.