WHITE OUT

A young woman’s memory loss and past trauma hold the key to a current murder investigation for a tough and driven detective.

Lily Baker awakens beside an unconscious stranger in a car dangling off an icy ledge in North Dakota She has no memory of what came before—or even who she is. Just about the same time, Detective Kylie Milliard is looking at the corpse of a young woman left in a dumpster behind a local bar. It turns out that the victim, Abigail, and Lily were both survivors of a terrible experience: Several years before, they were kidnapped, held captive, and abused by a man they managed to kill. As Lily’s memory slowly begins to return, she has flashbacks to the night of Abigail’s death, and she knows they confronted someone in the woods. Is it possible their original captor had an accomplice who's still after them? Or, perhaps they didn’t kill the right person the first time around? Kylie’s investigation leads her to believe that the killer might be close, maybe even part of the police force. And as she fights to discover the truth, someone has Lily in his sights. The book coasts along at a reasonable pace, full of just the right number of misdirections and surprises. The characters, especially Lily, are appealingly vulnerable. But there just isn’t much to set it apart from a dozen other thrillers—except, perhaps, the sweet love story that evolves between Lily and another character. For the most part, though, it’s surface fun.

It may come down hard like a blizzard, but it melts too fast.