Furious by T.R. Ragan / Reviewed by Lyn Farquhar
Killer Nashville Book of the Day
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T.R. Ragan
Furious by T.R. Ragan
Reviewed by Lyn Farquhar
At the open of T.R. Ragan’s Furious, pregnant Faith McMann is driving home on Friday afternoon, looking forward to the weekend. When she arrives, she walks into a nightmare. Two men have bound and duct-taped her children, Lara and Hudson. Her husband is being tortured, as his attackers interrogate him: “Where is it?” Terrified, Faith is forced to watch as the assailants murder her husband. They then take her children and slice her jugular vein, leaving her for dead. When she wakes up, her children are gone and she has lost the baby.
Ten days pass in a drug-induced coma during which time both the police and FBI agents have talked to her, but her mind has become a giant blank slate. Ultimately, she remembers what the killers and kidnappers look like, and draws their faces on the walls of her house. Faith then begins a crusade to find her children. She alerts the media, offers a reward, and consults web sites, as well as the database of missing and abused children.
When she visits the detective assigned to the case, she is infuriated when he doesn’t even remember her daughter’s name. She hits him over the head with a computer keyboard, and is required to live with her parents and attend an anger management course where she meets Beast, a bounty hunter, and his friend, Rage. All the people taking the seminar are encouraged to take nicknames. Faith names herself “Furious”. Faith and her parents suspect that the children have been taken by human traffickers and learn that one locus for the business is in Sacramento, California. Beast and Rage join Faith’s quest to find her children.
Interspersed with chapters in Faith’s voice are chapters related by Miranda, a trafficked teenager held in an out-of-the way farmhouse under the sadistic control of “Mother”. Faith’s ten-year-old daughter Lara is also in the house, having been renamed Jean. Miranda eventually escapes and helps in the quest. As the traffickers learn, there is nothing more dangerous than a mother fighting for her children.
Ragan’s book is a treatise on fighting child sex trafficking. It is not an easy read, but is well written, moves quickly, and sweeps the reader up in Faith’s mission. All parents, grandparents, and anyone who cares for or about children, should read this book. God forbid it should happen to any of us, but if it did, you would want Faith McMann fighting at your side.
Lyn Farquhar is the co-author of the Mae DecemberMystery series, under the penname Lia Farrell.
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