Taken By A Stranger By Lin Summerfield

 
Title: Taken By A Stranger
Author: Lin Summerfield
Series: Walker Mystery
Hardcover: 242 pages
Publisher: Walker & Co; 1ST edition (February 1995)



"The author of Never Walk Behind Me offers a novel of psychological suspense that portrays the world of Nicky, a lovely little girl of eleven, and Darren, a frightened, careful, lonely young man in his twenties."






I wasn't going to do a small book review on Taken By A Stranger but I noticed that no one else has. So today I'm going to quickly talk about what it's all about.

The story is about Darren Gillespie, a young man in his early twenties and 11-year-old Nicolle Gurney.

Darren Gillespie had a terrible past. He watched his father beat his stepsister to death and has served a sentence in jail for an incident that happened Ipswich.
When Darren meets Nicolle, she is just as beautiful as his stepsister, Francie, and also shockingly resembles her.
However, Nicolle is bruised and Darren suspects her stepfather, Alan Ralph, of mistreating her.
Nicky insists of running away with Darren and begs him to take her with him. Darren, seeing that her mother is dying and that he would rather take care of her himself than let her stepfather, agrees to take her.

Throughout the book, Darren goes through a lot of struggles. Such as finding jobs, creating lies to go by, and changing his identity and appearance.
During all of these events, Mike Southgate, who was Darren's social worker, tries to track down Darren as he suspects that he has Nicky. Mike soon teams up with Nicky's father to help further search for both Nicky and Darren.

I really liked the relationship between Darren and Nicky. Darren never once hurt Nicky and he would never plan to. However, there did come times when Darren had to hurt others in order to keep Nicky safe.
I knew that once Darren started thinking more frequently of Francie and comparing her to Nicky, that he would sooner or later break down.
Darren loses control of himself while watching Nicky being so thrilled with the play of Peter Pan that he 

*SPOILERS*

kisses Nicky unexpectedly. Only to realize what a horrible thing he did two seconds later.

The ending of Taken By A Stranger was something that I was not expecting. The rest of this will be spoilers, so highlight the rest of you want to know what I'm talking about. 

I knew that Nicky and Darren were going to be caught but I was thinking that they would just arrest Darren. Nicky was even trying to explain to the police and telling them to leave him alone. But what did the police do? They shoot him. So now Darren is dead and this is pretty much the end of the book.

...I Gave Taken By A Stranger 3 out 5 stars.

^^