RADIANT HEAT

An Australian bushfire sets off a mystery.

Alison King has moved back into her childhood home in Lake Bend, a small town outside Melbourne, following the death of her parents. But when a sudden bushfire forces her to flee the house, she finds in her driveway a red car, inside of which is the body of a woman she doesn’t recognize. In the woman’s purse is a scrap of paper with Alison’s name and address, and according to her ID, the woman, Simone Arnold, lived in Cairns, a city where Alison spent 10 years. As the investigation into Simone’s death proceeds, Alison learns that she was running from an abusive ex-boyfriend, who happens to have been Alison’s own ex. Hesitant to tell the police about the connections between her and Simone, Alison finds herself under suspicion as she begins to suspect Simone was followed by their mutual former boyfriend, and that he might still be nearby. Tonally inconsistent and difficult to follow due to flashbacks, this thriller sets up too many subplots to be entirely engaging. Alison is self-destructive and brash, and her attempts to grapple with the aftermath of the fire and her own troubled past become tangled in such a way as to distract from the book’s central mystery. What’s more, her hesitancy to truly engage with the police is never fully explained, setting up a conflict that never feels entirely logical.

Confusing rather than mysterious, this many-pronged thriller falls short.