THE BLAZE

A combat veteran returns from Iraq with a traumatic brain injury and must confront a forgotten past in this literary thriller by the author of Champion of the World (2016).

Matthew Rose only returns home to Montana to take care of affairs after his father's suicide. He meets up with Georgie Porter, his ex-best friend and a reporter for the local newspaper. Thanks to an IED in Baghdad, "his memory had been scrubbed clean," so he doesn't remember her or anyone else he used to know in Montana. But people know him. Walking late at night, he witnesses a house fire and sees an apparently homeless man leaving the scene. Abigail Green has been housesitting for the lesbian couple who owns the house, and her death in the fire leads the police to suspect a hate crime against the owners. But a cop tells Georgie, "There's a lot more going on here than you know....She's not who you think she is." Bits of memory slowly return to Matthew while Georgie digs deeply into the tragedy for the newspaper. A candy store had burned years before, and Matthew is troubled at the thought he might have been involved somehow. Now a police officer is murdered, another house is set ablaze, and Matthew nearly drowns in a frozen river. Matthew and Georgie both sense that connections exist between past and present tragedies, but what could they possibly be? The renewed friendship is tentative and platonic for the two main characters, who both care deeply about the truth. In time they make a terrible discovery that leaves their own fates uncertain. A wounded veteran and a strong newspaperwoman combine with a well-constructed plot to spin a plausible and engaging tale. It brings to mind Owen Laukkanen's Deception Cove with its pairing of solid male and female protagonists.

This one wins far more on characters and danger than on bloodshed. Keep books like this coming, Chad Dundas.