The Stolen Ones by Owen Laukkanen
Putnam/Penguin, $26.95, 358 pages, ISBN 978-0-399-16553-5
It’s a helluva thing to take on a subject like the one we are about to . . . this being the Christmas season; a time when many of us are thinking about Peace on earth and goodwill to men . . . but the plain truth of the matter is that crime never sleeps and criminals don’t take vacations. They’re vicious and opportunistic—always looking for an edge or a chance to do what they do—without being caught. And so, we’re going to go ahead and review The Stolen Ones, by Owen Laukkanen, which is about slavery. In specific, sexual slavery. Young women, held against their wills, and sold by traffickers to others who force them into prostitution.
The novel begins with a vivid description of forty women who’re being smuggled from eastern Europe to the United States in a shipping container. They’ve been aboard a container ship at sea for a couple of weeks without adequate food, water or sanitary facilities. After the ship lands, they’re shunted into a new container and whisked off in a tractor-trailer driven by two thugs with bad attitudes and worse manners, who periodically stop and pull a few girls out. They’re never seen again by the remaining ones. Among the imprisoned are two sisters, Irina, the older of the pair who’s chasing a dream of riches and fame in America, and her younger sibling Catalina, following after her big sister, hoping to keep Irina safe. At a truck stop in Minnesota however, one of the thugs shoots and kills a deputy sheriff, while the two sisters try to escape. When police arrive on the scene, they find a dead lawman, and a hysterical young woman holding an empty pistol next to the body. She has no ID and speaks no English. Agent Kirk Stevens of the Minnesota BCA (Bureau of Criminal Affairs) agent, who was vacationing nearby, is called in. He’s soon inducted into a joint BCA-FBI joint task force, on a coast to coast manhunt to break up a huge international ring of kidnappers and sex slavers who are selling the women into prostitution and misery. It’s a diabolic race to see who will prevail, and if the young teenage girl can survive her captors long enough to be rescued. A well-done suspenseful novel featuring a timely and little-known subject.
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