It Only Takes a Moment, by Mary Jane Clark (Book Review)

Those of you who read Mary Jane Clark's novels may remember Eliza Blake. All of Clark's novels center around the staff of the fictional KEY news team, including Eliza. I have some trouble keeping all of the characters straight, since usually too much time passes before I read another book of hers, but generally it doesn't matter. The stories stand on their own and you don't really need to remember details of the previous books.

Eliza is a single parent of a seven-year-old daughter, Janie. Her husband died some years before. She has a boyfriend, Mack, but he is overseas. She has just been re-assigned to do the morning show, which will enable her to spend the summer afternoons with her daughter. She is basically content with her life, but then one day the unthinkable happens. Janie is kidnapped, along with their housekeeper, Carmen Garcia. Terrified and guilt-ridden for allowing her daughter as much public exposure as she has, Eliza and her friends, not wanting to sit around and wait for the FBI and local authorities to find Janie, launch their own investigation. Eliza even gets some help from a psychic, though the authorities are rather disinclined to trust what the psychic says, and her intuitions do seem to be pretty vague.

The story alternates between different points of view, including that of the kidnappers, and the reader learns that money isn't the motive for Janie's kidnapping, but what is it? Clark also does a wonderful job of making everyone look guilty, so even though you get an idea of what the kidnappers are thinking, you don't know who they are until the end, at which point there is a surprising twist. It's a great book for mystery lovers.