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Looking for a short story about a man who is investigating a spate of shoplifting in a small town. The local business people are close to panic as merchandise seems to vanish without a clue.

Eventually the investigator catches the perpetrator who turns out to be a disturbed young woman. We find that the investigator and the shoplifter are part of the next stage of human evolution and — along with others of their kind — have developed a protective ability that allows them to go unnoticed amongst Homo sapiens. This ability had allowed the shoplifting woman to steal completely unobserved.

Part of a short story collection, can’t remember when I read it.

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  • You can't remember exactly when you read it, but even if you could narrow it down to a decade or two that would really help to narrow down the search space. Can you say "no later than 2000" or "no earlier than 1970"? Was the collection of stories by one author or various authors? Was it a collection of general sci-fi stories, or did it have a theme of "mutants" or "superpowers"? Hardcover or paperback? American or UK or other?
    – user14111
    Commented Mar 31, 2019 at 0:13
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    In the story is Homo superior generally "disturbed", or just this particular young woman shoplifter? Does their ability to "cloud men's minds" also work on animals? Are dogs aware of them? Do they have any other superpowers? Telepathy, psychokinesis, high intelligence?
    – user14111
    Commented Mar 31, 2019 at 0:20
  • This sounds vaguely similar to a story called something like "Hunting of the Snark" in the "Drakas" collection (stories by other authors in the Draka alternate history by S. M. Stirling), but not close enough to confidently give it as an answer. In that story, it's a computer security system being tested in a mall that consistently refuses to register two people as human (they're not actually shoplifting). It turns out that they are, in fact, not human (highly engineered human-descendants from an alternate timeline, though they look human) and it ends badly for the people who find them out.
    – cometaryorbit
    Commented Apr 1, 2019 at 5:52
  • Read it it the 80s I think. Just this woman seems to be disturbed. Doesn't mention if the 'power' works on animals. The shield is to protect them while they develop.
    – user111684
    Commented Apr 1, 2019 at 14:21
  • Is it possible to "refresh" this question so that newer viewers can read it and possibly answer it.
    – Royston Neale
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 18:30

1 Answer 1

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Looks like this one could be 'And then she found him' by Algis Budrys. It seems that so many stories that have stuck in my mind were by this author. AbeBooks is winging a copy of the short-story collection my way.

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  • You can read it here archive.org/stream/Venture_v01n04_1957-07_jodyanimator#page/n44/…
    – user14111
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 23:17
  • Thanks but I'll wait for the book to get here.
    – Royston Neale
    Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 10:32
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    As soon as I read "superhumans with an ability to hide from humans" I immediately thought of Algis Budrys. The most famous of the many stories on this topic he wrote is "Nobody Bothers Gus"
    – Covertwalrus
    Commented Feb 28, 2022 at 7:40
  • "Nobody Bothers Gus" – another good read from Budrys. He was a splendid writer.
    – Royston Neale
    Commented May 19, 2022 at 14:12

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