LOST IN CAMBRIA

In Welde’s novel, a married couple in witness protection, face danger from the Mafia and from a disturbed former FBI agent.

After schoolteachers Ann and Steve Kent were forced to flee Miami for Los Angeles, the one shining light is the recent adoption of their son, Peter Ford. But drug lord William Vitello, whose brother, Frank, is responsible for the shootings, unearths their location and arranges a hit. Fortunately, the authorities find out in time and move the family to sleepy Cambria, 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Then FBI agent Hank Gifford soon spills their history to their new neighbor, David Boone, a hardboiled retired fed whom Gifford knows. Gifford asks Boone to keep an eye on them, and Boone happily obliges. However, he’s instantly obsessed with Ann, who reminds him of his late wife, Susie—a fellow agent who was killed in the line of duty. He creepily installs a secret camera in the couple’s bedroom without their knowledge. When a suspicious man arrives in town asking about the family, it appears that Vitello’s henchmen are closing in; Boone, meanwhile, is hearing strange voices and becomes fixated on avenging Susie’s death, which may have involved the Vitellos. Welde’s novel has a high-stakes premise and well-executed scenes of violence, and the twisty final chapters will keep readers guessing as they speed toward the conclusion. However, his prose feels unpolished, with stilted dialogue and melodramatic moments; for example, when Ann encounters gnats during a walk, it’s likened to a “biblical pestilence” and “salvos of aggression.” An excessive number of characters and convoluted plot points (including bizarre psychic experiences) make it difficult for readers to know where their sympathies should lie, and the third-person narration confusingly jumps between various players. There are also occasional errors; for example, readers are told that Peter that was adopted at the age of 15, and then at 12.

A promising but ultimately confounding suspense yarn.