The Elf Hat Read online

Glenda and Norbert had spent the morning packing their suitcases, and they now waited for their flight at Toronto International. Glenda watched the closed-captioned news. After the report on a few calamities in various parts of the world, there was an account from the municipality of Strathroy-Caradoc. It read:

  The police have changed the charges against Otto Schmit from attempted kidnapping to kidnapping. Snapshots of a baffled Otto Schimt being handcuffed appeared on the screen. The digital camera situated on Front St., in fact, recorded a one Otto Schmit get out of a blue pickup truck, grab three-year-old Norbert Vaillot and take off on Head St. Fortunately the boy was returned unharmed to his mother.

  Pictures of a radiant Glenda hugging and kissing her boy and of Norbert playing with Zufolo flashed on the TV screen, while more text appeared at the bottom.

  In an interview granted earlier to Chanel 10, Ms. Glenda Vaillot said that the false report that the boy had been left wandering alone after the Christmas parade and the successive disappearance of her son could have been part of a nasty scheme aimed at shedding poor light on her parental ability. She said she’d followed the blue pickup, and only later, at dusk, she’d spotted her son’s elf hat near one of the houses on Head St. The authorities would like to know the details of the rescue of Ms. Vaillot’s son, but they’ll have to wait. Ms. Glenda Vaillot and her three-year-old boy are currently on their way to Jamaica, on a trip offered by a benefactor who wants to remain anonymous.

  Glenda pulled Norbert very close to her and caressed his blond hair. “We made it, son! From now on, nobody is going to bother us.”

  The End

  and other books available at www. Amazon.com.

  Rene Natan also has a book trailer about her latest thriller, The Bricklayer.

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyI3-Yg9Td0

  What are Rene Natan’s novels all about? Here are some snapshots of her plots.

  Mountains of Dawn is about an orphan who wanders from foster care to foster care with no place she can call home. Suddenly she comes into money—but the people who killed her parents are now after her.

  The Collage describes the anguish of a young woman accused of a murder she hardly remembers having committed.

  Cross of Sapphires is centered on the life and tribulations of a man of the law who falls in love with the wrong woman: a female athlete on the run.

  Operation Woman in Black is dedicated to all parents of handicapped children. Its aim is to entertain the reader while portraying the hardship of coping with a mentally retarded girl who becomes a mother.

  The Jungfrau Watch is a political thriller. A young man is raised to believe that communism is the panacea for all the world’s problems. Then the Soviet Union collapses, exposing all its crimes. What chances has a person like that to redeem himself? The answer is at the very end of the story!

  The Red Manor is about family bonds that stretch over two continents and where love overcomes both greed and cleverly engineered criminal plots.

  In Fire Underneath the Ice (a novella coauthored by Sharon Crawford under the pen name Natanevin) revenge is supposed to be sweet, but when Michael Hamming decides to take it out on the daughter of his nemesis, he finds love instead.

  The Blackpox Threat is a spy story. Her country threatened by a deadly epidemic, Tamara Smith moves from her comfort zone to a world filled with deception, treachery and life-threatening danger.

  In The Bricklayer everything is going well for Frederick Dalton, until he hires a female engineer in his construction company.

  The author in brief.

  Rene Natan is a retired professor of computer science who reverted to the passion of her youth: storytelling. She wrote eight novels and co-authored a novella, their genre varying from romantic suspense to thriller.

  Honours

  First place, 2012 Five Star Dragonfly Award for the Blackpox Threat

  Finalist in the 2011 Indie Book Award for the Blackpox Threat

  Honorary Mention, 2012 San Francisco Book competition for the Bricklayer