Review – The Breakthrough

Child kidnapping under any circumstance can bring out fear, discouragement, and frayed nerves, but it can also bring out faith, trust and hope.

After losing everything and his family a few short years ago, Boone Drake, the youngest bureau chief of the Chicago Police Department’s Major Case Squad, felt it was all behind him.  He had a new wife and a son by adoption.  Ever since he’d lost his first wife and son, his pastor would send him a daily Scripture reference via his cell phone.  His faith has been restored.  Yet things seemed too good to be true.  Boone had this nagging feeling that danger is lurking around the periphery. Then that day’s verse came, saying, “People are born for trouble as readily as sparks fly up from a fire.”  Job5:7ff.

Disaster does strike again when Boone’s wife faints at a friend’s house, crushing her skull and leaving her in a coma.  While sitting at her hospital bedside, their son, Max, has been kidnapped.   Haeley Drake had come into money.  Are they after her share?  Leads are slow to come in. It feels like the other shoe has been dropped–and Boone asks why?  How much more can he handle?

Through tips, they find out that Max has been corralled into human trafficking and is headed to the Hutong district in Beijing, China.   Who would do such a thing?  Can they find him before he’s gone for good?

Jerry writes a very real-to-life, intense nightmare of a book that many families find themselves in when their children are kidnapped.  Nerves become frayed, fears mount, prayers are lifted, finger-pointing mounts, and discouragement settles in when all they hear is silence from the perpetrators.  This is the scenario we find Boone wallowing in during the opening scenes of The Breakthrough after his wife is injured. Should Boone stay at the hospital with his wife or get into the fray?  With the help of his fellow police officers, they don’t allow Boone to stay there feeling helpless!

The descriptive cat-and-mouse game of police investigations are up to par with today’s tactical maneuvers currently used in police departments and other law enforcement.  The wait and see stakeout situations, contacts made with the people involved, pitting ‘persons of interest’ against each another, covert investigation at its peak, and sting operations are true to life as any precarious investigation.  Jerry’s description of the caliber police tactics and politics keep the fast pace moving.  The action and intensity definitely pique and keep your interest.

Though some of the men on Boone’s team aren’t believers, they are exposed to his faith and trust, and the moving of God through prayer.  It’s written about in a natural way, as though it comes as second nature.  At the same time, we are privy to the tenacity of the team’s God-given talents used in ferreting out culprits.

This is my first crime book by Jerry, and I enjoyed the action immensely.  The twists and turns keep you constantly guessing about what’s going to happen.  The only drawback is the abrupt ending to the story.  I felt it could have been drawn out a little more to meet the caliber of the rest of the story.