The Pied Piper ©1999 by Ridley Pearson is a kidnapping crime thriller featuring Lieutenant Lou Boldt and Dr. Daphne Matthews of the Seattle Police Department. The book is so titled because a serial kidnapper leaves behind a toy flute as his signature of having taken a child. This echoes the tale of the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin who was hired to rid the town of rats. He successfully lured the rodents to drown in the river by playing his flute, but the townspeople denied him payment. As revenge, he used his music to lead the children of the town to a similar fate. Look closely at the copper-colored body of the flute in the cover artwork by George Cornell of the paperback version I read. It is subtle but there is the reflection of a man holding a little girl, which I found appropriate for this story.
The front image was indeed intriguing but still, had not a good friend of mine recommended this book, I may very well have passed it by. It was a mere 495 pages long and printed in itty-bitty 9 point font on yellowed newsprint weight pages. I dubiously began to read it, telling myself if I really got into it and it was too tiny to focus, I could re-buy it in kindle form. But I was quickly hooked and, so thoroughly so, that I became oblivious to the poor visual quality. Short chapters were also a plus in encouraging me to read "just one more" before taking a break. As this novel opens, the modern day kidnapper steals a ninth child in Seattle, Washington. The anguish of the bereft parents is conveyed so artfully and poignantly I became invested in their fate and that of their beloved stolen four-month old little girl. Since previous kidnappings occurred in other states, the FBI become involved as well as the SPD, Seattle Police Department. There are a large number of character names to remember in the opening chapters of the book (from FBI and SPD both) which was a bit disconcerting, but I forged ahead, refusing to get discouraged. I have since learned that apparently Ridley Pearson is a very prolific writer and this is his fifth book with the main character team of Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews. Followers of this author would already know this pair and would need to come up to speed only with the FBI contingent. The setting for large portions of this book is Seattle, Washington. Since I visited there recently as a tourist, many of the places were familiar and lent themselves to my further enjoyment of the novel.
I liked the characters and the fact that the book also includes their back story. When I would watch crime shows on TV, the back story was as interesting to me, or even more so, than the crime being solved; e.g., the relationship between Rick Castle and Kate Beckett on Castle or the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in Superman. Lou Boldt has recently been promoted from the investigative division to the intelligence division. The intelligence division looks at the evidence and, in concert with profilers, draws crime theories while the investigative section does the footwork to support or refute these connections by gathering more data for correlation. Boldt is a very sharp detective, highly respected, but self-effacing. He himself has two young children and his wife is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. His wife Elizabeth is understanding and supportive of his work in spite of her illness. Daphne Matthews is a smart, attractive woman, very skilled at her job as a psychologist and profiler, who is a close friend of Lou Boldt .
The intricacies of the plot and clever mechanisms by which the police gather information are the key elements that make this novel a worthy read. How do you find who the targeted families for the next kidnapping might be? How do you find where a vacant home might be for covert operations? How do you avoid being followed? How do you lose a "tail". How do you encourage rather than eschew obfuscation? How do you uncover a potential mole? How many more children will be kidnapped before the perpetrator is apprehended? If you are curious, then read The Pied Piper.
I rate it four stars which equates to Really good; maybe only one weak aspect or limited audience. The audience might be "limited" to those interested in crime thrillers. Crime thrillers are not a large percentage of my book choices, so it is to The Pied Piper's credit that it was good enough in its genre to grab and hold my interest. Nearly two thirds of Amazon reviewers gave this book 5 stars. Ridley Pearson is well renown in his writing genre so if you are going to read a crime thriller, you might as well read one of the best. Oh, and, as a cute touch, the chapter dividers are teeny silhouettes of a baby buggy.
