[The Solid Gold Kid is] a skillfully written and credibly plotted suspense story with fascinating psychological overtones…. At the mercy of a vicious, sadistic couple,… five young people—three boys and two girls—endure days of agonizing imprisonment and live through unspeakable physical and mental torture. Several times they nearly escape, and once they come within a hairsbreadth of being cremated alive; one of the girls is shot and severely wounded, and the other risks her life in a perilous but vain attempt to free the captives. The teenagers, from diverse racial and social backgrounds, are incisively individualized characters; closely confined and under the pressure of constant terror, their attitudes toward one another alternate between genuine solicitude and snarling hostility. The appalling events reach a climax with a breathtaking police chase; but more significantly, the reader feels that the story is essentially concerned with the human capacity for...