Look Again

The 2009 thriller Look Again is by mystery novelist Lisa Scottoline. The suspense is built around a moral dilemma: what should a mother who legally adopted her son do if he turns out to have been kidnapped from his real birth parents? Answering this question involves uncovering the complex plot behind the boy’s disappearance and involves spying, murder, and extortion.

The novel’s protagonist Ellen Gleeson is an investigative journalist working for a Philadelphia newspaper, where she has romantic feelings for her sexy Argentinian boss, Marcelo. Two years ago, Ellen met her adoptive son Will, a boy who had seemingly been abandoned in the intensive care unit of a hospital because of a heart condition. After going through the legal procedures necessary, Ellen adopted Will; now he is a happy and thriving three-year-old. Written as an overly precocious child whose speech is often a little too complex for his age, Will is taken care of by Connie, Ellen’s accommodating and always available babysitter.

One day, Ellen finds a "Have You Seen This Child?" postcard in the mail. When she looks at the picture, the age-progressed child looks exactly like Will – this boy, named Timothy Braverman, was kidnapped two years ago from Miami. Ellen quickly becomes obsessed with figuring out whether Will and Tim are the same child, plagued by pain at the thought that her son isn’t really who she thinks he is.



First, Ellen checks the details of the adoption process – everything on her end seems to be in order. However, she discovers that Karen Batz, the lawyer who handled her adoption has recently committed suicide.

Ellen now defaults to investigative journalist mode, locating the name of Will’s birth mother, Amy Martin, in a garage full of forms from moms giving their children up. She can’t contact Amy, but she does get in touch with Amy’s mother, who tells Ellen that Amy was never pregnant and in whose house she finds a photo of a man Ellen dubs “Beach Boy.”

To get out of work, Ellen pretends to be sick, flying down to Miami to investigate the Bravermans. She stalks them, getting Carol Braverman’s DNA from a cigarette. She sends the DNA to a lab to see whether it matches Will’s.



Doing all this puts Ellen’s work life at risk, and Marcelo eventually has to fire her. He is understanding, and they end up having sex.

A few days after Ellen’s visit to Amy’s mother’s house, Amy is found dead, ostensibly of a drug overdose, despite having been in recovery for a long time. Amy’s friend Melanie tells Ellen that Amy used to date an abusive guy named Rob Moore – the man whom Ellen already knows as “Beach Boy” from the photograph, and whom she now realizes looks exactly like the man shown kidnapping Tim in surveillance footage.

Suddenly, Ellen puts the whole thing together. It’s clear that Rob Moore was involved in the kidnapping of Tim Braverman and also in the sham adoption that transferred the boy, renamed “Will” to Ellen. However, with the deaths of Karen and Amy, it’s also clear that Rob is now getting rid of anyone who can incriminate him or who knows anything about what happened.



Ellen and Will are now in serious danger. She rushes home, but Rob is already there. He hits her in the head and ties her and Will up. But then the doorbell rings – it’s Carol Braverman, Tim/Will’s real birth mother. As soon as Rob sees Carol, the truth about what really happened comes out. Tim was Carol’s birth son, but because she had a crazy gambling addiction and massive debt, she hired Rob to fake-kidnap Tim so that Carol could access Tim’s trust fund for one million dollars of “ransom” money. When the staged carjacking in which Rob was supposed to easily kidnap Tim went awry, Rob took off with Tim instead of returning him to Carol. Rob’s plan was to double-cross Carol, keeping the ransom for himself and his girlfriend, Amy. When Tim turned out to have a heart problem, though, Rob convinced Amy to give him up for adoption instead.

As Carol attacks Rob to try to get to Tim/Will, Rob shoots her in the head and kills her. However, this chaos gives Ellen enough time to get to Carol’s gun and shoot Rob in self-defense.

The case is processed by the police and then by the FBI – who tells Ellen that since Bill Braverman, Carol’s husband and Tim’s father, is still alive, Tim/Will is legally going to live with him. Ellen is devastated. Then, the next day, her DNA testing results come back, and it turns out that Bill wasn’t Tim’s father. His father was Rob – the kidnapper, with whom Carol had been having an affair.



The novel ends with Will’s fourth birthday party. He is back home with his adoptive mom Ellen, but Bill is there too – he has also become a part of Will’s life. Ellen is doing well and is engaged to Marcelo, her former boss at the newspaper.