18 SECONDS and LAST BREATH were the first two books in George D.
Shuman’s suspense series, and LOST GIRLS is sure to expand
his growing fan base. Sherry Moore was blinded at a young age, but
her sight was replaced with a gift that allows her to
“see” the last 18 seconds of a dying person’s
thoughts. By touching the individual, she is often able to
understand what he or she was thinking or seeing just before death.
Though wanting to keep a low profile, her talent has become known
to law enforcement, and she has been called upon to help solve
difficult cases.

Sherry’s good friend and father figure, retired Admiral
Garland Brigham, asks her to travel to Mt. McKinley to assist Navy
SEALS in the rescue of a group of hikers. While on the face of the
snow-packed mountain, she grasps the hand of a climber who has
already succumbed to the storm. Immediately she is able to see his
last thoughts, and the vision of his final 18 seconds leads Sherry
into a perilous adventure that may claim her very life. The last 18
seconds of the young man who died on the treacherous slopes of
frozen Mt. McKinley triggered in Sherry the nightmares that led to
an investigation of one of the world’s most horrific criminal
networks.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, three other young women are
headed for a place in that same adventure. Aleksandra Goralski is a
warrant officer with the Polish police force. Jill Bishop is a
teenager visiting ashore while on a cruise with her sister and
parents. And a nameless young Russian girl is lured aboard a
freighter with promises of a good job in America. All are destined
to meet in a chamber of horrors, enslaved to those who traffic in
human beings.

Shuman has tackled a little-known criminal activity that is
flourishing in several countries around the world: sex tourism. It
seems to have grown as a result of the Russians moving from trading
black market arms to trading humans, specifically young women who
are seduced with promises of a better life in foreign countries.
But instead of luxury yachts or cruise ships, they find themselves
in the stinking hold of a freighter with nothing but darkness,
dread and the bodies of others like themselves, some of whom failed
to survive the journey and are left to decompose where they
lay.

The story of these lost girls is enriched with documentation
born of thorough research. Haiti’s “dark age,”
ushered in by Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the
’60s, was perfect for drug trafficking and the human
trafficking that followed. His bloody legacy was passed on to his
son, “Baby Doc,” and later to his philosophical
offspring that included Jean Bedard and Thiago Mendoza. The frozen
body that led Sherry into this investigation was that of Sergio
Mendoza, reluctant heir to their terrible throne.

Discounting any danger to themselves, Sherry Moore and Carol
Bishop, the mother of one of the lost girls, risk their lives to
uncover this nest of human vipers and to put an end to their
ghastly business. LOST GIRLS is a compelling human drama, told no
holds barred by a dynamic storyteller.