Finished reading 7/3/09:

CITY OF THE SUN by David Levien, 2008.

Swiftly moving thriller about the taking of an 12 year old boy, Jamie Gabriel, while on his paper route one morning. To the police and his parents, he has vanished without a trace. The father, Paul, hires Frank Behr, a p.i. with police connections to track him down and find out what happened to him, as the parents want some kind of closure. Behr, working with the slimmest of clues, begins the hunt. Paul wants to be more involved in the investigation, and Behr and Paul form a kind of uneasy bond and work together to solve the case. The whole investigation leads them down paths no one wants to follow.

The unsavoriness/seaminess of the subject matter could be a stumbling block: it is repellent, but at the same time intriguing and makes for a thrilling story. Definitely a page-turner.