cover image Broken

Broken

John Rector. Thomas & Mercer, $15.95 trade paper (242p) ISBN 978-1-5420-9150-3

Maggie James, the protagonist of this unpleasant thriller from Rector (The Ridge), comes to Beaumont Cove, an isolated tourist destination that strikes her at first view as “a quaint Christmas village left to rot,” to identify the body of her estranged 23-year-old sister, Lily, who was strangled and badly beaten. Maggie and Lily, who grew up with their widowed police office father in Colorado, hadn’t spoken since Lily married her abusive, drunken boyfriend, Mike, a year earlier and moved with him to Beaumont Cove. Maggie has no doubt Mike, who has been arrested for Lily’s murder, killed her sister, and flashbacks show Mike beating Lily senseless. But other flashbacks, to the run-down beach motel where Lily and Mike were living in a long-stay apartment, reveal that someone else had motive. Maggie winds up staying in Beaumont Cove at great peril to her life. There’s no mystery as to how this familiar story unfolds or how it ends. Readers with a high tolerance for graphic violence will best appreciate this one. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (Sept.)