The Orphanage by the Lake

Hazel Cho's private investigation business in Manhattan is one bad month from folding when Madeline Hemsley walks in. Wealthy, composed and impossible to read, Madeline offers $100,000 for a single job: find her goddaughter, who disappeared six months ago from an orphanage in upstate New York and whom the police have effectively written off.

Hazel takes the case for the money and quickly finds that the orphanage's placid surface hides a great deal of it. The staff have rehearsed answers, the records do not add up, and the girl was not the first child to leave without leaving a trace.

Daniel G. Miller's psychological crime thriller keeps its footing in Hazel, an investigator with more debt than leverage, and lets the case pull her steadily further from anyone who might help her. The further in she goes, the clearer it becomes that whoever took the girl is still watching who comes asking.