LOOSE ENDS

The puzzle of a long-past accident brings together a diverse group of survivors and suspects.

Ten years ago, waitress Kate Fullerton survived her father, stepmother and stepsister in a suspicious auto accident in South America. Kate, who remembers little of the accident, married and divorced an attractive con artist who spent her inheritance. Kate moved in with her brother Magnus Lennox, an attractive but vague college professor immersed in Russian history, who encourages her to go back to school or find a better job. After being constantly harassed by Stefan, a frequent customer at the restaurant where she works, she happily accepts a position at a travel agency, where her new boss, Janine, offers to share her apartment. When Jefferson Andrewes, who makes his living untangling fraudulent schemes for a bank, arrives to book a trip and Kate suggests South America, she does not know that his own mother had also died there in an auto accident. Jefferson’s parents had been divorced and his mother remarried to a wealthy man whose source of income has always been mysterious to Jefferson. Meanwhile, Janine’s wealthy older lover, whose own business raises question marks for Janine, asks her to look at his books, as he suspects that he’s being ripped off. When Kate is kidnapped and held captive by Stefan, both Janine and Jefferson report her missing, but the police do little to help. What do these characters’ disparate pasts have to do with their present problems, and what do those problems have to do with each other?

Moody (Dancing in the Dark, 2012, etc.) concocts an addictive, ironic and darkly suspenseful combination of mystery and romance.