Radiant Heat

Collins delivers a clever, unsettling debut about the mysterious connection between two apparent strangers. Australian artist Alison King has barely survived a brushfire that devastated her small town of Lake Bend. After covering herself in a bathwater-soaked blanket while the flames ravaged her home, she’s emerged safely, only to find a soot-covered car near the ruins of her house that contains a strange woman’s corpse. Alison can’t spot an obvious cause of the woman’s death, but gets a shock when she looks in the dead woman’s wallet: beneath a driver’s license IDing the dead woman as Simone Arnold is a paper bearing Alison’s own name and home address. The police are curious about why Simone would have resolved to visit a perfect stranger, curiosity that blossoms into suspicion after they discover that, though Alison and Simone had once lived in the same apartment building, Alison insists they’ve never met. As Alison chases down more information about Simone to satisfy personal curiosity and clear herself of wrongdoing, she slowly uncovers uncomfortable points of connection between Simone and herself. Nimbly balancing character study and straight-up mystery, Collins is patient with her reveals, but never at the expense of the book’s steady momentum. This is a writer to watch. Agent: Mina Hamedi, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Jan.)