This is an excellent stand-alone novel from Adrian McKinty, who is also the author of the Sean Duffy crime novels, a series which is among my very favorites. The protagonist here is a woman named Rachel O'Neill who has been having a very bad run of luck. Her husband has left her for a younger woman and she's been ill with cancer. Then, on a morning when it appears that her cancer may be returning, Rachel gets the worst news a parent could possibly imagine: her thirteen-year-old daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped.

Inevitably, of course, a voice on the phone tells Rachel not to contact the authorities. But in addition to demanding a monetary ransom, Rachel is told that in order to get her own daughter back, she must kidnap someone else's child and hold that child until the parents agree to pay a ransom and kidnap a victim of their own. Rachel, Kylie, and the other parents ensnared in this trap are now a part of The Chain, a devious criminal conspiracy that perpetuates itself and enriches its developers, by forcing ordinary citizens to do the unconscionable work of kidnapping children. Should Rachel or anyone else break the chain, they and their children will be killed.

Like the other victims of the chain, Rachel, a moral, upstanding, law-abiding citizen, is forced to confront the question of how far she is willing to go to protect her own child. And the answer, of course, is that she will do literally anything.

This is one of those stories that grabs the reader from the opening page and refuses to let go. It's also a variant on the theme of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations and forced to save themselves and their loved ones. Part of the book's power is that, in watching Rachel react, the reader is forced to imagine how he or she would behave under similar circumstances.

The Chain requires a fairly healthy suspension of disbelief, especially as the book reaches its explosive climax, but I was so caught up in the story that I didn't even stop to think about that until after I had finished reading it. I suspect that a lot of readers will have the same reaction, and that, also like me, they will be up late into the night, turning the pages of this one.