Jeff Abbott is the
New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of many mystery and suspense novels.
His new novel is
Never Ask Me.
At CrimeReads Abbott tagged five top adoption thrillers. One title on the list:
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (1949)
This novel should be better known—but it’s such a wonderfully well-kept secret. (It was strangely turned into a film musical in 1953 starring. . .Bing Crosby. No, I haven’t seen it.) It’s an emotionally wrenching journey through one man’s decision about fatherhood. English poet Hilary Wainwright is told that 
he left behind a son in wartime France. The child’s French mother died at the hands of the Nazis—is her child Hilary’s? When Hilary—selfish, unsure if he wants to be a father—attempts to connect with the orphan who is supposedly his son, the reader is drawn into an unbearably tense reckoning. These two souls have now encountered each other—how will each change the other? Will Hilary accept him as his son—and will the boy accept Hilary? And if he is not Hilary’s son, will Hilary abandon the boy? This is a book to be read in one sitting. In 2001, Nicholas Lezard wrote a re-appraisal of Little Boy Lost for The Guardian: “If you like a novel that expertly puts you through the wringer, this is the one.”
Read about
the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
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