No Good Deed

A retired Australian geologist stumbles into a conspiracy involving precious diamonds in this intriguing thriller from Kovacic (Kill Yours, Kill Mine). After losing her husband of 40 years to cancer, Rena Novak embarks on a cross-country trip they’d planned to take together. While driving on the Great Northern Highway in Western Australia , she spots smoke and, worried about a wildfire, seeks out the source. A couple hundred meters off the highway she finds a burning Toyota with a blackened corpse inside and calls the police, who ask her to stick around for a few days while they investigate. As Rena talks to locals in the nearby town of Fitzroy Crossing, she learns that the community is divided over a proposal by a diamond-mining company that wants to start operating in the area. Then Rena discovers that the dead man was a fellow geologist whom she knew decades earlier. Haunted in part by strange inconsistencies at the site of his death, including that his car was left in neutral, she launches an investigation linking his possible murder to the diamond mine. Kovacic makes Rena a three-dimensional protagonist whose sleuthing skills are impressive yet realistic, but a few too many plot contrivances keep this from achieving its full potential. Still, it’s a good bet for fans of Jane Harper. (Mar.)