Have you seen my son?

by Jack Olsen

Have You Seen My Son? is Jack Olsen’s powerful novel of child-snatching and a mother's obsessed hunt for her five-year-old son – “a gripping, intensely moving novel,” writes Robert Daley, author of Prince of the City and Year of the Dragon. “The ending left me with tears in my eyes. There is no love like mother love, is there?” And no greater test of it than what Lael Pritcher is about to endure. One cool April day, Mike Pritcher visits the home of his estranged wife, Lael, and takes their son, Ace, for an overnight outing. “She pushed her son’s black-rimmed glasses up the slope of his thin nose. He jerked away like a puppy slipping its leash. A giggle, a crunch of gravel, a single wave of a grimy hand, and her only child was gone.” Gone – child-snatched, though Lael won't realize that right away, and won't understand what it means even when the police tell her it's a “domestic matter.” “You got the right to snatch him back,” her lawyer explains. “That’s about it.” So that’s what she s