THE ABDUCTORIt begins with a name whispered to a teacher in the schoolyard… “Marion….Marion.” Someone is lurking in the bushes, but they run off before Miss Moynton can confront them. There is indeed a Marion in her class, so she tells the principal about the event. She even goes the parent’s house to ask if someone was supposed to pick up Marion from school. But Marion’s mother has other concerns, and doesn’t take the question seriously. However, another nearby family, the Trents, have a daughter named Marilyn, and they have every reason to fear this schoolyard stalker. They have been living in fear of a man who blames the husband for his wife’s death, and keeps threatening them on the phone. When the new substitute teacher, Marion Kennick, is kidnapped with one her students, it looks like the stalker has finally decided to strike. THE BANK WITH THE BAMBOO DOORMarlie Renick lives in a town full of secrets. Her own secret is tormenting her. She is pregnant by a man who is not her husband. Then there is Dr. Ferrie, who carries the secret of temptation. He is being blackmailed for his affair with a young woman he refers to as “the barracuda.” His wife holds another, much darker secret, one that changes her entire life. And Jim Griffin, the young man who appears so innocently in Karen Evans’s gardening store, is anything but what he seems. Their lives, and many others, all intersect when a conniving lothario leads them to a bricked-up cellar wall that hides the greatest secret of them all. The Abductor begins with a suspenseful premise as it follows the troubled lives of three potential kidnapping targets The crime, when it comes, creates a tremendous moral conflict for everyone involved As in real life, it s not always clear which people will turn out to be heroes, villains, or something in between not even to themselves. --Dead Yesterday "Mrs. Hitchens combines strong cumulative suspense with neat and bitter sketches of the families involved in a forceful blend of irony and excitement." --Anthony Boucher, New York Times Full of secrets, past and present, many of them centering in a dark cellar, behind a bricked-up wall An ingenious plot the danger is very real and very contemporary. --Chapel Hill Weekly Julia Clara Catherine Maria Dolores Robins Norton Birk Olsen Hitchens, better known to mystery fans as Dolores Hitchens, was born December 25, 1907 in San Antonio, Texas. She married Beverley S. Olsen, a radio operator on a merchant vessel, around 1934. Beginning in 1938, Dolores wrote a series of mysteries as D. B. Olsen. After a second marriage in the early 1940s to Hubert Bert Hitchens who was a railway detective they collaborated on a series of five railroad mysteries from 1957 to 1964. Dolores also wrote an excellent group of standalone mysteries, including Fool s Gold which was filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Band of Outsiders in 1964, as well as the critically applauded Sleep With Strangers and Sleep With Slander. She passed away on August 1, 1973 in Orange County, California.