Watch Us Fall

An investigative reporter’s disappearance sets a young woman spiraling in this tempestuous psychological thriller from Kovac (The Cutaway). Domestic abuse survivor Lucy Ambrose is horrified when her roommate, Addie James, returns to their Georgetown row house bruised and bloodstained following her morning run. According to Addie, a man she initially mistook for her ex-boyfriend, Josh Egan, leaped out of a bush and grabbed her. She broke his nose and fled, but declines to report the incident and swears Lucy to secrecy. Later that night, however, D.C. police come calling: Josh failed to show up for work, and his condo concierge thought Addie might know where he was. After days pass with no sign of him, Lucy skips work to figure out what happened, despite fearing that the answers she seeks might lie uncomfortably close to home. Kovac intercuts Lucy’s increasingly anxious first-person narration with third-person chapters chronicling Josh’s preoccupations over the preceding months. Though the plot feels overstuffed and many of the characters are underdeveloped, brisk pacing and bountiful melodrama keep the pages turning. Paula Hawkins fans should take note. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (Dec.)