The Break-In

Faulkner’s ho-hum latest (after The Other Mothers) focuses on the fallout after stay-at-home London mom Alice Rathbone kills a home invader. When knife-wielding teenager Ezra Jones breaks into her house while her seven-year-old daughter, Martha, is having a playdate, Alice bludgeons him over the head with a stool and kills him. At first, she assumes it was a random attack, but after talking to Ezra’s mother, she suspects the teen had been stalking her family. Alice turns to her new friend Stella, an investigative journalist, for help getting to the bottom of the situation. Then Alice’s husband, Jamie, disappears, reigniting dormant rumors that he’d been involved in sex scandals—and possibly even murder—as a senior executive at a charity organization. Eventually, Faulkner knits everything together with a series of surprising reveals, unveiling hidden motives and unlikely links between her characters. She gets in her own way, however, with too much plodding exposition and characterizations too thin to earn readers’ investment. It’s a letdown. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Agency. (Aug.)