Nine top crime novels about stolen children

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. The first Maggie D'arcy mystery, The Mountains Wild, was on numerous Best of the Year lists and was a Library Journal Pick of the Month. The fourth Maggie D'arcy mystery, A Stolen Child, was released in June, 2023.

[The Page 69 Test: The Mountains Wild; The Page 69 Test: A Distant Grave; Q&A with Sarah Stewart Taylor; The Page 69 Test: The Drowning Sea]

At CrimeReads the author tagged nine of "the richest and most chilling crime stories and novels about the disappearances of young children," including:

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

I love everything Attica Locke has written and the two (so far) novels in her series featuring Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews are both triumphs of characterization, setting, and plotting. In Heaven, My Home, Mathews is tasked with finding the missing son of a white supremacist. Locke draws Mathews as a conflicted, angry, skilled, and compassionate investigator, who wants to find the boy despite his father’s monstrousness. The solution is heartbreaking and surprising and as always, Locke makes you feel like you’ve been to her settings along Caddo Lake and breathed the humid, unsettled East Texas air.

Read about another entry on the list.

Heaven, My Home is among Steph Cha's five greatest American social crime novels.

--Marshal Zeringue