This allowed the plot to stay away from stereotypes and formulaic dramatisation. The book allows us to witness the child and his kidnappers at the same time as we see the rest of the story unfold, which I appreciated very much. I found it difficult to stop once I started and wanted to know what was going to happen next. The story is surprising at every corner with unexpected connections, turns and events. This takes place in Nevada County during a bluegrass festival. The donor suddenly takes an interest in 'his' child, while the biological mother also has a rekindled interest in her 'lost son'. One through sperm donation, one through adoption. Blaha is a well plotted and gripping thriller about a child abduction.Ī possibly only minor and harmless incident in a supermarket starts a chain reaction of events for a family with two unconventionally acquired children. Please note that all but the ending pages of this book were written in 2012, and the novel was copyrighted before the Supreme Court overruled California’s Proposition 8, therefore references to California’s marriage laws reflect conditions during the time period between the passage of Proposition 8 and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. You’ll be left to draw many of your own conclusions as this novel twists and turns its way to the end.Īll characters in this novel are fictional, so any similarity to a real person is completely coincidental, and the address numbers used do not actually exist. But, elsewhere in Grass Valley, Horace's wife, Sally, succumbs to a mental breakdown and is hospitalized only to be overdosed with haloperidol which sends her into a coma.

Meanwhile, Ardina stalks the Branson-O'Briens in the Nevada County fairgrounds during a bluegrass festival hoping for an opportunity to snatch their adopted son, Will. Eventually, Horace learns that what we believe is not necessarily true when his friend Dennis allegedly commits suicide after admitting to Lieutenant Joe Maurin (Horace's brother-in-law) that he broke confidentiality by providing Horace with information about Laney. At the same time, Ardina Rinoldi hatches a plot to kidnap Laney's older brother - a baby she gave up for adoption seven years earlier. In the novel, Dominoes, Horace Pitts is accused of attempted kidnapping when he tries to catch a glimpse of Laney Branson-O'Brien, a child he fathered through sperm donation.

Dominoes by C.B. Blaha