What fire brings A thriller

Fledgling private investigator Bailey Meadows is undercover at a Topanga Canyon writer's residency sponsored by blockbuster thriller author Jack Beckham Jr. Posing as an aspiring novelist, Bailey is looking for her friend Sam Morris, a missing persons' advocate who disappeared while searching for her missing mother. Ultrarich Topanga Canyon is a tangle of menacing paradoxes--methheads squatting in woods near gated mansions, women's bodies dumped on world-famous hiking trails, and natural beauty threatened by wildfire. It isn't supposed to be a particularly dangerous case. Bailey theorizes that Sam has fallen into an amnesiac fugue state instead of meeting foul play. But things at the Beckham estate get weird fast. A woman appears from nowhere, insisting that Bailey check the tall grass, a creepy security guard seems to be watching her, and Beckham's wife and mother turn out to be missing under strange circumstances. Classic gothic and Hitchcockian themes take on post-COVID-19 twists here, fueling paranoia and shifting realities as Hall crafts harrowing what-ifs around writers' relationships with their stories.

An aspiring suspense writer searches for her missing friend in this intricate if unwieldy chiller from bestseller Hall (What Never Happened). Forty-something Bailey Meadows arrives at the swanky Topanga Canyon estate of popular crime novelist Jack Beckham with dual missions. On the one hand, Beckham has selected her as a writer-in-residence to help him shape his latest thriller; on the other, she's secretly searching for her missing friend Sam Morris, who disappeared somewhere near Beckham's remote property while trying to find another lost girl. Upon arrival, Bailey feels out of place--she's the only Black person at her welcome party, which is populated by Beckham's ritzy California milieu. Her unease grows following suspicious encounters with Beckham's ex-con cook and the Botoxed novelist himself. As Bailey pursues her theory that Sam entered a dissociative fugue somewhere in the canyon, Hall shuffles in scraps of history about a 1993 wildfire in the area, gradually orchestrating the plot to a scorching crescendo. The pacing is a bit jerky, and most of the red herrings are too telegraphed to trick readers, but Hall's gift for white-knuckle action saves the day. This will satisfy suspense fans. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary. (June)

A novice Los Angeles investigator searches for a missing woman. Bailey Meadows is not her real name. But the false identity and backstory created by her mentor, Avery Turner, win her an invitation to live as writer-in-residence at the palatial Topanga Canyon estate of Jack Beckham--the son of famously unpleasant and successful author J.D. Beckham--while she helps him write a thriller. Shortly before, Avery's partner, Sam Morris, who'd recently suffered some weird fugue episodes, vanished in Topanga Canyon while searching for a missing woman on behalf of their nonprofit organization, The Way Home, and Avery will spare no effort to find her--including getting Bailey inserted into the Beckham home. Jack, meanwhile, is upfront about using Bailey's perspective as a Black woman to give his book a slant no white man could achieve. The lack of steady Wi-Fi becomes a problem as Bailey strains to do her research for the book and keep Avery informed about her search for Sam. The security guard who helped her find Jack's estate seems to be watching her, an old woman sneaks in from the woods, and there's constant danger from wildfires. All this feeds Bailey's paranoia about a job she feels ill-equipped to handle. So does the time Jack spends familiarizing her with the area where a serial killer's lurked for many years and revealing that both his mother and wife disappeared without a trace. As evidence piles up about missing women, Bailey continues to doubt herself, and when a wildfire approaches, she fears that she'll die before she can find the truth. Nothing is what it seems in this tour de force. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.