Such a Winter’s Day

In the prologue of this so-so romance-tinged suspense novel from Thompson (Praying for Time), Owen and Sera Reid of Parrish, Ohio, are devastated by the murder of their 18-year-old son, Fin, an aspiring rock musician; someone slit Fin’s throat and tied him to a tree, leaving the corpse for his 15-year-old sister, Juliet, to find. Nine years later, Juliet’s world is rocked again when she learns that Wendell Booth, the developmentally delayed and violent neighbor who was convicted of Fin’s murder, is now free after a juror came forward to confess that she accepted a bribe to vote guilty. That shock is followed by the news that Owen, a police deputy, apparently shot himself in the head in the tree house he built for Fin. Juliet and Sera don’t buy the conclusion that Owen died by suicide, and soon afterward violence claims the life of someone else important to Juliet. She and a childhood friend, whom she hopes will be a love interest, investigate. Thompson keeps the reader guessing who’s going to survive, but the whodunit plot doesn’t compel, and Juliet’s emotional reactions to repeated trauma fail to convince. Thriller fans can safely pass. Agent: Pamela Ahearn, Ahearn Agency. (Mar.)