Night Sins by Tami Hoag

Every once in a while a thriller comes along that stretches the limits of the genre and takes readers places they have never been before. There are the fears we hide deep inside where the real world isn't supposed to touch us. In the night - any night - these fears, terrors, and emotions can drive us to commit the darkest sins. Now there is an author who knows these secrets and has woven them into a relentlessly compelling thriller, a book of such page-turning power that it is time to declare there is a new modern master of suspense - and her name is Tami Hoag. Deer Lake is a small Minnesota town where people know their neighbors and crime is something that happens on the evening news. But the illusion of safety is shattered when eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood disappears from a hockey rink as he waits for his mother to pick him up after practice. The only thing the police find is his duffel bag with a note stuffed inside: ignorance is not innocence but SIN. With each passing hour the search for Josh takes on a more ominous intensity. For Megan O'Malley, the new regional officer of the state criminal investigative unit, it is the first test of whether she can cut it in the all-male world of local cops. For police chief Mitch Holt, it is a frightening reminder of the big city crime that devastated his life before he fled to Deer Lake. All the while someone watches, preparing the next move in a deadly game to which only he knows the rules, a game of terrifying clues leading to one final twist of the trail - and a snare set by a warped mind as black as death, as guilty as sin....