REVIEW: Sugar & Spice by Saffina Desforges

Description: It's every parent's worst nightmare: A child fails to return home. As hours turn to days, all they can do is hope. Some children never come back...
Driven by the need to know why, a mother confronts the man accused of her daughter's murder, He presents a compelling defence, convincing Claire not only that he is innocent of harming her daughter, but that his previous convictions were not what they seemed.
Teaming up with a second-year psychology student and a fourteen year-old truant schoolboy, Sugar & Spice is the story of a mother's fight to bring one man's reign of terror to an end.

My Thoughts: I have never read a book in which so many sympathetic (at least at the onset) characters are pedophiles. It's a bit of a mind-screw, actually; if not for the fact that the authors are not American and that the book was written well before the Penn State scandal broke, I would swear that one in particular was based off of an intense study of Sandusky. This book is tautly plotted, fantastically researched (only mistake I noted was that Jack the Ripper was much more likely to be a disorganized offender than an organized one, and even as I type I realize that being able to pull this info off the top of my head says something about me...), and features a young profiler who fast became my favorite new character of the year. (A place previously held by Lisbeth of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) It's incredibly disturbing in places, and I never thought I would encounter an arc where chemical castration would actually constitute a happy ending, but Sugar & Spice is an altogether engrossing and deeply layered ride. A definite recommendation.