Origin

Publishers Weekly

Abu-Jaber, who dealt with Arab-American themes in her earlier novels, Crescentand Arabian Jazz, shows her versatility in this gripping contemporary thriller. A spike in the number of local SIDS deaths piques the interest of Lena Dawson, a fingerprint specialist at a Syracuse, N.Y., forensics lab. Is it a statistical fluke or is there a killer at work? Determined to account for the dead infants, Lena joins the investigation, which stirs tantalizing memories from her dimly recollected early childhood. Despite her fragile mental state, Lena proves capable of surprising resolve. Her relationship with her protective ex-husband, her budding romance with a detective and her quest for her own lost past add psychological depth. Abu-Jaber's lovely nuanced prose conveys the chill of an upstate New York winter as well as it does Lena's drab existence before she was drawn into the mystery of the crib deaths. This enthralling puzzle will appeal to both crime fans and readers of literary fiction. 9-city author tour. (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

What appears to be a series of crib deaths might actually be murder. From the author of Crescent; with a nine-city tour. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School
A baby is found dead in its crib. The police call it sudden infant death syndrome, but the distraught mother is convinced that it is murder. Lena, a fingerprint specialist known for solving a puzzling child-murder case a few years earlier, is drawn into the investigation. Her almost uncanny intuition-and the deaths of several more babies in short order-sends her searching for a killer. Lena has distanced herself from people, choosing to live in a sparse, cold apartment after separating from her philandering, controlling husband. In fact, life-threatening cold permeates this chilling tale, a metaphor for many elements of the eerie mystery, including Lena's childhood. She has strange, fractured memories of the time before she was three when she moved in with foster parents. As the investigation progresses, there is a sense of urgency to catch the killer as it becomes apparent that Lena's life is in danger, and that her mysterious childhood is somehow connected to the infant's. She is helped and protected by a young detective with his own past. As the weather thaws, Lena also begins to warm to the people around her as she learns the deep, dark secret of her origin. Teens fascinated by CSI will find this haunting mystery gripping, all the way to its surprising conclusion.
—Ellen BellCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A moody thriller from Arab-American Abu-Jaber (The Language of Baklava, 2005, etc.) that transposes the author's usual questions of identity onto a young lab tech who believes she was raised by apes. Life is grim for Lena Dawson, a fingerprint examiner for the Syracuse police. Uncertain about her own origins, or her sanity, the delicately pretty technician has carved out a spare existence for herself since her philandering husband, Charlie, left, and has also lived down the brief flare of fame that followed her uncovering of crucial evidence in the murder of a child. Still, she knows her grasp on reality is tenuous, and she's content to live now primarily for her work. Her fragile solitude is disrupted when a grieving woman, unconvinced that SIDS was the cause of her baby's death, seeks her help. Lena's own acute senses tell her that something is amiss when other babies turn up dead. She's soon interacting more than she'd like with the desperate mother, her own brittle foster parents and a wounded detective named Keller, who sparks rough jealousy in her ex. Lena's sanity is challenged when she starts to think she's being stalked by the killer. But Abu-Jaber transcends formula, weaving the whodunit in prose as evocative as poetry. In winter-gray Syracuse, Lena's senses are heightened. Haunted, moving crime fiction.