What Still Burns

This tense but disappointing mystery from Grawl (One of Those Faces) centers on Lexi Blake, a traumatized 30-year-old journalist. When Lexi was 10, she barely survived a horrific fire at her family farm—allegedly an accident, but Lexi has doubts—which killed her parents and siblings and left her in the care of her Aunt Beth. Now, Beth has died, and Lexi has inherited the farm, plus a mountain of debt from unpaid taxes and Beth’s medical bills. Though she swore she would never return, Lexi is forced to head from San Francisco back to her tiny hometown of Sola, Calif., so she can sort out her tangled financial situation. As she grapples with the sale of the property and the trauma it unearths, Sola residents start turning up dead, and Lexi begins to wonder: could the answers to these recent murders help provide clarity about her family’s fate? Grawl smartly spreads suspicion among the cast, even suggesting that Lexi’s occasional blackouts render her own memories unreliable, but she fails to bring her characters to life, and substitutes Lexi’s tragic backstory for real depth. Worst of all, she brings the mystery to a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. This small-town thriller starts strong, but fails to stick the landing. Agent: Abby Saul, Lark Group. (Aug.)