Blood Kin: A Novel

Obsessed with finding her roots, adoptee Kate Lundgren travels to a quiet Minnesota town where she finds her biological mother to be callous, cold, secretive, and, the next day, strangled to death. 15,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Adoptee Kate Lundgren, 23, is caught up in murder as she pursues her biological mother in this emotionally intense mystery with a surprise ending. After years of legal efforts to get in touch with the woman who bore her but who has twice refused contact, Kate discovers the woman's name in a letter in her adoptive father's files. Traveling across Minnesota from White Bear Lake to Woodard, she confronts Terry Cruzan, who is curt and secretive and insists that Kate leave her alone. Refusing to believe Terry isn't interested in her, Kate dogs her steps and spies on her house. Then she discovers Terry's strangled body and vows to locate her natural father, whose identity she is convinced Terry died to protect. With the help of local developer Jack Kramer, Kate learns that Terry was being bankrolled, perhaps by a mysterious man she met periodically in Duluth. Kate's own life is threatened before she learns a series of hard truths. Dorner ( Freeze Frame ) delivers credible motivation and well-crafted suspense.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Days after happily adopted Kate Lundgren browbeats her foster parents into helping her find Teresa Cruzan, her birth mother (whose identity they've hidden from her through four years of feigned searching)--and after Kate has thrust herself into unwilling Terry's life--she discovers Terry's strangled body and sets out, with the help of chastely romantic Jack Kramer, to find her father and uncover the motive for Terry's murder. The small-town Minnesota atmosphere, well- meaning and provincial, is particularly good--``Woodward is proof,'' as Jack says, ``that hell is full and the dead walk the earth''--and so is the facility that Dorner (Family Closets, Freeze Frame) shows in juggling candidates for Kate's paternity (Terry's lowlife companion Bruce Maxwell, self-righteous businessman Thomas Werner, even--gasp!- -Kate's adoptive father Doug). Too many nocturnal stalkings and near-fatal attacks for all but the most devoted Mary Higgins Clarkies--but the final unmasking is well worth the wait. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.