At one time or another, all of us have considered the appeal of walking out of our current life, leaving everything and everyone behind, and starting afresh somewhere new. Few people have stronger reasons to do this than Polly Costello—female lead in Laura Lippman's new James M. Cain-inspired thriller, Sunburn—who has fallen into a series of abusive relationships. Her latest lover, whom she encountered while on the run, is Adam Bosk. Unbeknownst to Polly, Adam is a private investigator who's been hired to get close to her in order to look into Polly's dubious dealings regarding a large insurance settlement. Despite initial misgivings on both sides, the two develop genuine feelings for one another. But Polly is no stranger to the casual, spur-of-the-moment lie, and pretty much everything about Adam Bosk is based on a lie as well (actually, nearly everyone in this book plays fast and loose with the truth), so it is quite difficult for the reader to determine just who is playing whom, and it remains that way until about three pages from the twist ending. Don't peek.

SOLE SURVIVOR
Army sergeant Nola Brown has been given a new lease on life—sort of. She was mistakenly counted among the dead in a military airplane bombing in which there were no survivors until the mortician, Jim "Zig" Zigarowski, who knows Nola, realized that the remains in his care were of some other person entirely. Brad Meltzer's latest thriller, The Escape Artist, traces the troubling arc of the very much alive Nola's existence, flashing back to her traumatic childhood and adolescent years, and then forward once again to present day, when she is running for her life from a band of deadly conspirators operating under the moniker of Operation Bluebook. Without a doubt, her childhood prepared her in large measure for the harrowing challenges being thrown at her now (think Lisbeth Salander, minus the dragon tattoo); she will have to call on every last resource at her disposal in hopes of neutralizing Operation Bluebook before it neutralizes her. The Escape Artist has the pacing of a Japanese bullet train, a clever and original plot, and the requisite twists to keep the reader off balance.

LAND OF SECRETS
It could be problematic for an author to revisit a novel after nearly a decade in order to tell the rest of the story, but John Hart plows right through those concerns with The Hush, a gripping sequel to his Edgar Award-winning novel The Last Child. Ten years have passed since the double homicide chronicled in that first book, and the now 23-year-old protagonist, Johnny Merrimon, faces the loss of the Hush, the 6,000-acre parcel of North Carolina property he inherited from his family. Part swamp, part woodland, the Hush is said to be the home of unseen things, perhaps supernatural. As rival forces begin to compete for Johnny's land, strange events begin occurring, culminating in a crucifixion. Hart deals with the supernatural in much the same way as James Lee Burke or T. Jefferson Parker—he puts it out there on display but lets the reader decide how much is real. Nonetheless, he will manage to elicit goose bumps from even the most skeptical reader.

TOP PICK IN MYSTERY
If we translated our day-to-day experiences into fiction, the many converging plotlines would rarely fit into a coherent A-to-B narrative. Very few authors, especially suspense novelists, follow this natural model. One who does, and does so brilliantly, is Kent Anderson, whose Green Sun follows the erratic career of Hanson, a Vietnam vet turned cop, then professor, and about to turn cop again, this time on the mean streets of east Oakland, California. Hanson engages with an interesting and motley group of nominal heroes and villains with whom he shares the daily stage: 11-year-old Weegee, who has the street smarts of someone twice his age; drug lord Felix Maxwell, the sort of folk hero about which narcocorridos are written; and a plethora of fellow cops who take umbrage at Hanson's refusal to comply with police norms. Conciliation and peacekeeping are his primary goals in community policing; arrests and incident reports are to be avoided whenever possible. With Green Sun, Anderson writes effectively—not with bombastic special effects, high tension or even a lot of suspense, but instead with realism—and he imbues his protagonist with a solid dose of humanity. If I were a cop, Hanson would be on my short list for role models.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

No plot details, but Meltzer is a perennial New York Times best-selling author, and this book has a 200,000-copy first printing plus a seven- to ten-city tour.

Nola Brown is the U.S. Army's artist in residence, rushing in to capture battle details that later clarify what really happened, but now she's seen something she shouldn't have. With a 200,000-copy first printing and a seven- to ten-city tour.

Jim "Zig" Zigarowski is a mortician at Dover Air Force Base, where he prepares the returning bodies of U.S. heroes so they can have proper burial, and thus providing closure for the families. Years earlier, a girl named Nola Brown saved his daughter from severe injury, and now her corpse arrives at Dover after a suspicious plane crash in Alaska that also killed other government operatives. Feeling grateful to Nola, Zig intercepts her body to prepare it himself. He quickly realizes the dead woman is not Nola and wonders about her true identity. This discovery sets Zig on a harrowing path of danger, subterfuge, and government secrets as he searches for Nola and tries to discover the secret that has made her a danger to the government she serves as the U.S. Army's artist-in-residence. VERDICT Weaving the past with the present and creating a conspiracy with connections to magician Harry Houdini, Meltzer's series launch is a gripping thriller that will not disappoint his many fans. A true page-turner. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17]—Sandra Knowles, South Carolina State Lib., Columbia

Mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski, the hero of this stellar series launch from bestseller Meltzer (The Book of Lies), works the U.S. government's most top-secret and high-profile cases at Dover Air Force base in present-day Delaware. Zig's world changes when a military plane mysteriously crashes in the Alaskan wilderness and the body of soldier Nola Brown, who as a child saved his daughter from an explosion at a Girl Scout camp years before, arrives on his table. As Zig prepares the body, he discovers that the scars Nola sustained at camp are missing, and he becomes suspicious. When he finds a crumpled piece of paper in the woman's stomach, a warning for Nola, his suspicions are confirmed: this isn't Nola. Zig is determined to discover what happened to her and whether she's safe. The closer he gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon he finds himself in the middle of Operation Bluebook, a secret government program that goes back to Harry Houdini. With its remarkable plot and complex characters, this page-turner not only entertains but also provides a fascinating glimpse into American history. Author tour. Agents: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim, Williams & Bloom Agency and Jenifer Rudolph Walsh, WME. (Mar.)