In the tradition of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, to whom L.R. Wright is often compared, the suspense in Kidnap stems not from whodunnit but why. A young girl is taken from her aunt's care while her father is in Hawaii trying to recover from his wife's sudden death. A middle-aged woman, spurred on by an unscrupulous accomplice, tries to assuage her feelings of loneliness and despair with a dramatic act of revenge. Edwina "Eddie" Henderson, battling to assert her authority over the Sechelt's RCMP detachment following the retirement of beloved Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, urgently tries to put together the pieces of a mysterious psychological puzzle in time to find the missing girl.