Twisty Books that Inspired Cate Holahan’s Newest Thriller
I belong to a lost generation. Born in the dying years of the seventies through the early eighties, my peers and I relate with feeling unmoored—too young for Gen X and too old for Gen Y. A micro group of thirty-million Americans lacking specific coordinates in a bipolar world of analog and digital. Before and after Apple.
Though we may pretend, we’re different than digital natives. For us, “phone” carried a prefix. We remember rotary versions attached to kitchen walls and the words that came after: cordless, mobile, cell, smart. We had breakfasts without devices. And we grew up staring at vanished faces on milk cartons.
The missing children milk carton campaign was unique to the early eighties. As an elementary schooler, those kids were part of my morning routine. I’d catch their black and white photos on the backs of my cardboard quart of two percent as I wet-down my cereal. Reading the stats beneath their images was my childhood version of adults scanning the morning news. I took note of their names, their smiles which belied the terror of their circumstances. The bolded headline, always the same.
As a child, the milk carton kids were cautionary tales, parental shorthand used to warn of threatening adults. Don’t talk to strangers or you could end up on a milk carton. Don’t visit unfamiliar places or you, too, could be a face on a box. You want to be at the breakfast table, not on it.
Now that I have my own kids, my perspective has shifted from dreading that I could end up like those children to sympathizing with their families. The greatest nightmare of any parent, I believe, is the horror of not knowing where one’s kid is or what could be happening to them, waking with the fear that a loved one whom you’re supposed to protect is being irreparably hurt; that they’re somewhere in need of solace which you can’t provide.
This is the main fear tackled in my latest book, The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold. The story is told, in part, from the perspective of Catherine Newhouse Ingold, a middle-aged mom whose nineteen-year-old daughter is kidnapped. The other perspective is of the daughter, Alice, which is conveyed from diary entries written during her captivity.
My latest novel doesn’t only revolve around the fear of a kidnapped child, however, but also my generations’ broader fears for our children. Like me, my kids are growing up on the cusp of massive technological change. Like Alice, they were born into a digital world and will be coming of age in a landscape dominated by artificial super intelligence.
Parental fears are something so many of us can relate to, either because we have kids or because we were one once and can sympathize with our parents’ concerns for us. As such it’s been a source of inspiration for some of my favorite books. Here’s a list—by no means comprehensive—of some great kidnapping stories that tap into these primal parental emotions.
James Patterson needs no introduction and, after his Anthony Award nominated noir novel California Bear, neither does his co-author Duane Swierczynski. In this book, they tell the story of six kidnappers pursuing a ten-figure payout for members of the same family and the FBI agent determined not to pay them a dime.
In this book, bestselling author Wendy Walker—a writer who always tops my must-read list—tells the story of Molly Clarke, a heartbroken mom who is considering walking away from her life when the choice is taken from her. The story alternates between Molly’s ordeal and her daughter, Nicole’s, search for what happened to her mom. It’s a touching tale of parenthood as well as a thrilling kidnapping page turner.
This emotionally heart wrenching suspense novel tells the story of missing kidnapped kids from the perspective of a young girl forced to live with the fear that she or her classmates could be next. The voice of the main character pulls you in and won’t let you leave until the shocking finale.
Discover the Book
Alice Ingold has been kidnapped. Call the police. Alert the media. You can’t play this game without all the pieces.
Beautiful, blond, and immensely privileged, Alice Ingold is the perfect victim for a true-crime obsessed culture–and for a masked duo with a singular purpose. Instead of a demand for ransom, her captors have a riddle, and they’re inviting the entire country to solve it.As Alice’s mother grows increasingly desperate to understand each new clue, a complex picture of the crime develops. Soon, everyone will see the kidnapping of Alice Ingold for what it is–and Alice won’t be the only one who will need saving.
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Cate Holahan is a USA Today bestselling thriller/suspense author and screenwriter. She has six standalone novels and is co-author of the #1 Audible bestselling series Young Rich Widows, its sequel Desperate Deadly Widows.