PHANTOM INSTINCT

Two wounded warriors team up to take down the lowlifes who hurt them and would love to kill them.

Nobody believes Harper Flynn about what happened that night in Xenon, the Los Angeles club where she tended bar. Everyone agrees that a pair of masked men suddenly appeared out of nowhere and opened fire into the crowd, killing Harper’s boyfriend, Drew Westerman, before they fled into the night. But no one else saw the third gunman Harper insists fired the fatal shot—no one, that is, but Detective Aiden Garrison, who was in Xenon watching meth wholesaler Arliss Bale, the shooters’ presumed target, who escaped without a scratch. Like Harper, Aiden is certain there was a third gunman. But no one believes him either, because among the impressive injuries he racked up in the course of that night was Fregoli Syndrome, which not only makes it hard for him to identify certain faces, but sometimes makes him convinced that people around him aren’t really who they appear to be but enemies in disguise—enemies like that third gunman, who he insists he keeps spotting in the year after the incident. Once Aiden joins forces with Harper, who’s wounded only in her enduring shock and bereavement, it doesn’t take long for them to identify Eddie “Zero” Azerov as the third man. After spending the first half of this tale compellingly dramatizing how hard it is for Harper and Aiden to trust each other and their own perceptions, however, Gardiner (The Shadow Tracer, 2013, etc.) has the bad guys kidnap Drew’s kid sister and use her as a hostage to make Harper do their bidding.

The resulting action sequences, which fill the second half of the story, are never less than breathtaking but not nearly as interesting as the setup was.