Never Broken by Lori Duffy Foster

 

After coving a press conference for the announcement of a new commercial and shopping project in an area full of abandoned warehouses and some small shops, journalist Lisa Jamison has a shock.  Getting into her car, she finds a man lying on her back seat.  He is skeletal and seems on his last legs.  A car slowly crawls by her, obviously looking for the man.  Lisa decides to help him and drives him away.

When he can talk the man, Saul, has a horrific story to tell.  He was snatched off the street twelve years ago as a young man.  Along with twenty other people in the same situation, he has been a slave for those years, forced to work sewing goods in a fetid basement.  The slaves are given very little food and beatings are frequent and the hours are long.  One man had escaped a few years before and gotten to the police.  He was turned over to the same people who had enslaved him who convinced the police the man was an escaped mental patient.  His consequence was death.

Lisa is appalled and determined to expose this group.  She hides Saul away with a friend and a doctor she had dated for a while works on Saul's recovery.  But it is soon clear that Lisa is being followed after an attempt on her life.  Telling her editor, he gives her a partner and hides her away in safe locations at night.  Can Lisa and her partner find the slave warehouse before it is moved?

Lori Duffy Foster is a former crime reporter herself and her inside knowledge of how newspaper offices work is evident.  In this novel, she exposes a growing problem that is not common knowledge, that there are still slaves in our country and worldwide.  Many of women forced to work as prostitutes while others are slaves in factories or sold as household help to those willing to be part of this horrific trade.  The reader will be caught up in Lisa's investigation and it's climatic finish.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.