The Stolen Ones
Owen Laukkanen
Putnam
Dh66
Owen Laukkanen's The Stolen Ones concerns human trafficking and follows two Romanian sisters, Irina and Catalina, who have been kidnapped to be sold as sex workers. Irina escapes, triggering a sequence of events that further threaten Catalina.
Special agent Kirk Stevens of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and his FBI partner, Carla Windermere, are called in to investigate. Language barriers (Irina speaks very little English) and a crew of slippery villains well versed in police evasion make their job both difficult and, naturally, dangerous.
Laukkanen excels at writing relentlessly fast-paced action scenes and this book is full of them, with exceptional final fight scenes. While the plot may feel familiar to those steeped in television procedurals, its exposure of the insidious details of sex trafficking is laudable, although perhaps a bit sensationalised.
I was less than impressed with the characterisation of the bad guys – there seems to be an attempt to humanise one of them and it simply doesn’t work – and the head of the trafficking organisation feels over the top.
This is the fourth instalment of the author's popular Stevens/Windermere series, and while knowledge of the previous books is not absolutely necessary to enjoy The Stolen Ones, it may help in piecing together the characters' relationships with each other.