WHAT HAVE WE DONE

Four former friends are reunited when a secret from their past puts a killer on their trails.

Twenty-five years ago, five young teenagers living in a foster home did something very bad. This book’s prologue gives us a glimpse of it before shifting to the present, when those once-lost kids are adults who, at least from the outside, look like successes. Arty is a wealthy tech mogul, Donnie a fading but still recognized rock star, Nico a reality TV producer, Jenna a very happily married mom to two stepdaughters. And Ben became a judge—but now he’s been murdered. The other four survivors of Savior House haven’t seen each other in years, but Ben’s death will shake and imperil them. First to feel the seismic shock is Jenna, who, it seems, had a former career as an assassin, having been recruited at 15 right out of the foster home by a shadowy outfit called The Corporation. She gets a message she hoped never to get, summoning her back to her old job. But things go awry, and she hurries her family into hiding and goes on the hunt for Ben’s killer. In the meantime, Donnie, whose band is playing on a cruise ship, falls overboard but is miraculously rescued; Nico, on the job for a reality series about coal miners, is trapped underground when a tunnel collapses but also is rescued. And Arty is a target as well. Someone from their shared past is after them—but who, and why, and who is the mysterious woman who seems to have tried to kill each of them? Jenna is an engaging action hero, and Finlay makes skilled use of point of view, whipping the reader from Jenna to Donnie to Nico as they struggle to understand and survive, separately and then together again.

Fast-paced action and a compelling study of friendships power this suspenseful thriller.