Missing in Precinct Puerto Rico

From the Publisher

"Engages interest with strong prose, convincing detail and local color."- Kirkus Reviews "Steven Torres is a writer of great talent."- Michele Martinez, author of The Finishing School "One of the best police procedural series in print."- CrimeSpree Magazine

New York Times Book Review

Bennett's prose is like stained glass: if you stare at it, you see things you missed.

Publishers Weekly

A heinous crime that rocks the small Puerto Rican town of Angustias scars far more than victim and perpetrator in Torres’s searing fifth Precinct Puerto Rico novel (after 2006’s Missing in Precinct Puerto Rico). When Luisa Ferré, “a delicately beautiful high school girl,” wakes up the town with her screams late one night, Sheriff Luis Gonzalo is the first to reach her on the street. At the town clinic, the naked, traumatized girl is treated for assault. Aided only by 70-year-old deputy Emilio Collazo, Gonzalo hunts for clues while Luisa remains silent and sedated, unable to describe her attacker. Luisa’s father, whom Collazo finds in a drunken stupor with bloody knuckles, becomes a prime suspect, though Torres is quick to tell the reader the man had nothing to do with his daughter’s injuries. Gonzalo struggles with a paucity of evidence and overwhelming emotions as the ripples of the crime reach every corner of Angustias. Fans of downbeat slice-of-life mysteries will be most rewarded. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Torres's flat-footed fourth installment in his Luis Gonzalo series (after 2004's Burning Precinct Puerto Rico) takes a parent's worst nightmare as its grim premise: children are disappearing from the small Puerto Rican town of Angustias. Sheriff Gonzalo is distracted briefly by a red herring Los Macheteros, a violent, fringe political group that wants independence from the U.S. before he's filled with righteous horror at the true nature of the crimes. When Gonzalo's deputy runs down a suspicious car a chase that ends with the paralysis of the driver and death of his young passenger and finds child pornography in the car wreck, the lawmen discover that American pedophiles are kidnapping children as sex slaves. Whether readers can stomach gratuitous violence and sexual deviancy will determine their appetite for this crime novel. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Set in Puerto Rico, Torres's award-winning series (Burning Precinct Puerto Rico) illustrates life on an island conflicted by a natural desire to be independent while enjoying the benefits of its status as a U.S. commonwealth. His characters are poor in material things but rich in human relationships, as Torres shows in this latest novel when the little community of Angustias comes together, under Sheriff Luis Gonzalo's direction, to search for two missing children. But the situation rapidly changes when six-year-old Roberto Roman is kidnapped from his school yard and later found dead in his captor's car. Torres's writing is pure music for the soul. Highly recommended for all collections. Torres lives in Connecticut. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The little police force of Angustias, Puerto Rico, tracks a child pornography ring. By 1987, Sheriff Luis Gonzalo has been on the job for nearly 25 years. Now a handful of isolated incidents-a bridegroom from Miami taking too much interest in a little boy's beauty, a young brother and sister intercepted on the way home from a trip to the grocery, a teenager named Marisol imprisoning her younger brother Samuel in a remote house-create a sense of menace even before Gonzalo gets a call from Samuel's father, Tomas Villareal, about his missing son. Shortly thereafter, notorious lush Carmen Fernandez calls to report her daughter Lydia missing as well. With so many threads, the story inevitably moves in multiple directions as Gonzalo appeals to neighboring districts for help, his wife Mari makes an awkward attempt to reach out to Samuel's mother, Isabel, and Marisol flies under the investigative radar. Gonzalo's two deputies, reckless, fast-driving Hector and gruff old Emilio, beat the bushes and roust some colorful locals with colorful back stories. Gonzalo at first suspects a terrorist group known as Los Macheteros, but when he captures the first of the perps, he realizes he's up against something far more ominous. Though it's often hard to tell where Torres (Burning Precinct Puerto Rico, 2004, etc.) is going, his procedural engages interest with strong prose, convincing detail and local color.