When Carlotta Carlyle, Boston P.I., receives a snapshot of a newborn baby in the mail, her first impulse is to throw it away. But since her garbage has been mysteriously stolen, she's holding on to anything out of the ordinary. As the next few weeks bring more photographs of the same child, Carlotta is intrigued but still in the dark. A last eerie picture and a phone call enlighten her: Six-year-old Rebecca Woodrow died of leukemia, a strain with a ninety-five percent cure rate. Her distraught mother, Emily wants to know why.
Snapshot, Linda Barnes's fifth work featuring Carlyle, is a novel of obsession. Tormented by the death of her young child, Emily Woodrow desperately needs answers before she can get on with her life. On a more personal level, Paolina Fuentes, Carlotta's eleven-year-old "little sister" from the Boston Big Sisters organization, also seems obsessed. Carlotta is shocked to find Paolina keeping company with a much older street thug, apparently determined to find the father who abandoned her before she was born.
Never one to back down from a tough situation, Carlotta agrees to help out both Emily and Paolina. Soon the P.I. is plunged into a deadly conspiracy that threatens to rock the foundation of one of Boston's finest hospitals. Now it's up to Carlotta to make a clear image emerge from a series of blurred family snapshots, outsmart the forces of hypocrisy and corruption...and heal old wounds in the process.