A child has been kidnapped. His father, Evan Kiley, a newspaper reporter, telephones the home of the Wintons, a well-to-do family whose daughter had been abducted a year or so earlier. The Wintons paid the ransom and their child was restored to them; they did not call the police. Now Kiley blames this decision for his son's abduction, and George Winton feels guilty. The men who took Robin Kiley may well have been the same kidnappers; the new crime seems to follow the same pattern as the old. Perhaps if Winton had notified the authorities, the criminals would have been caught and the Kileys' son would have been spared. So Winton agrees to help Kiley in his time of need, and gradually the two are drawn together in a plot to thwart the kidnappers and get the boy back. But something goes wrong, and a murder is committed. As in all of Patricia Carlon's subtle psychological thrillers, the climax of this chilling novel is utterly unpredictable.

Amazon.com Review
Amazingly, Patricia Carlon's terrific crime novels weren't at first published in her native Australia; they were turned down, as an author's note tells us, because publishers there in the 1960s "didn't want anything but police procedural stuff." Luckily, the books were published in England, and now in America. Carlon is an absolute master of wringing every drop of suspense from a simple phrase or an exchange of glances--as good as Alfred Hitchcock at his best at showing us the skull beneath the suburban skin.

Crime of Silence starts out as a story of compassion: the father of a kidnapped child who was returned after a ransom was secretly paid, agrees to help another father in the same perilous situation. But as Evan Kiley, the reporter whose son has just been taken, begins to play on the guilt of businessman George Winton, you'll watch in growing horror (tinged with admiration at Carlon's skill) as the story changes into something much darker. A woman dies; a body is disposed of; lives are apparently linked. By the time you get to the chilling conclusion, you will most likely be eager for more of Carlon's unique brand of brilliance.

Other Carlon books available in paperback: The Running Woman, The Whispering Wall, The Souvenir. --Dick Adler