AN INVISIBLE WOMAN

A woman of a certain age and satisfied self-regard is savoring the inelegant approval of a piggish, beer-bellied construction worker in the moments just before, as she puts it, her world comes to an end.

Keeley Ryerson’s cell phone rings. It’s her husband Jimmy. The high-profile defense lawyer tells her: “Get out of town. Right now. Take a plane. Run.” Which is practically the last thing he ever says to her, since within the hour he’s dead, gunned down on a Manhattan street in broad daylight. Shocked and near panic, Keeley knows she has to stay strong. After all, if Jimmy thought she was at risk, then clearly their children might be, too. Bracing herself, she phones Andover, where both are students, to impart the bad news and bring them home. Meanwhile, Police Chief Henny Henneman, who happens to be Keeley’s former husband, explains to a televised press conference that since Jimmy Ryerson was attorney to a notorious gangster, the police are treating his offing as a mob hit. His kids close ranks, protesting that their adored daddy couldn’t possibly have been sleazily connected. Suddenly, however, the question of Jimmy’s ethical purity is eclipsed by a rash of supplementary murders. Run indeed, thinks Keeley. But where? And whom to trust?

An unimpressive debut: thin characters, implausible plotting, hyperventilating prose.