The Litmore Snatch

The Litmore Snatch is a 1957 detective thriller novel by the British writer Henry Wade. It was his final novel. Like much of Wade's work it takes the form of a standard police procedural. A review in The Guardian by fellow crime writer Anthony Berkeley considered the "book is a quiet and almost factual account of the police procedure following the kidnapping of a small boy for ransom, and personally I found it fascinating"

Synopsis
The owner of a newspaper in a seaside town in the North East of England receives threatening letters. Soon afterwards his ten-year-old son is kidnapped and a £10,000 ransom demanded.