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Puerto Rican sheriff fills gaps in 'Missing'

Parents get a chill each time a child kidnapping case hits the news, such as the recent Missouri case where a boy was taken from his bus stop and found four days later in a man's apartment with another boy who had been missing for more than four years.

Reading Missing In Precinct Puerto Rico won't calm those fears, though the action is set in the early 1980s and takes place on that far-off tropical island. In this October release, the fourth in a detective series by Steven Torres, Sheriff Luis Gonzalo takes on a rash of child kidnappings.

The storyline is grim, but not overly explicit and, as before, Gonzalo, the longtime sheriff of tiny Angustias, grounds the story. His deliberate police work eschews brute force (as Torres reminds us – "Luis Gonzalo thought of himself primarily as a thinking man."). Far from the stereotypical hard-boiled detective, he blesses his goddaughter at her quinceañera, watches over his town with a real feeling of responsibility and often confides in and relies on his wife, Mari.

Familiar characters from Torres' Precinct Puerto Rico series return in this fourth installment, including deputies Hector Pareda, a young risk-taker and the seasoned retirement-age Emilio Collazo. But, as in most small towns, it's the crazy mix of Angustias residents who spice up the story.

New York writer Torres lived briefly with his parents in a small Puerto Rican town when he was a boy and uses it as inspiration for the fictional but evocative town of Angustias.