Book Review: Crash & Burn

Lisa Gardner's latest thriller Crash & Burn has enough twists to give you the bends, but you won't stop, because Nicky Frank doesn't stop

Nicky Frank doesn't give up. Even after moving from town to town, adopting new aliases and three suspicious concussions, she's still determined as ever. Even on the night her expensive Audi SUV careens to the bottom of a ravine, with her in it. She has to find Vero.
She crawls out of the back and claws her way to the road where she collapses, moments after calling out for Vero. Someone save Vero.
To Sergeant Wyatt Foster, this is an open and shut drunk driving case. After an exhaustive search, and a particularly peeved, but delightful yellow lab named Annie gives up on the scent, he, his partner Kevin and Annie come up with diddlysquat. It's like there never was a child at all. No sign of a girl named Vero.
Obviously, Nicky is suspect zero for a particularly violent accident, and a possible missing child, but the snag is that she can't remember anything. Until Thomas Frank, her doting husband, shows up and drops the bomb - there is no Vero. She just made it up. Figments of a fractured mind's tortured imagination. But Nicky knows something that even her mind will not unravel. Something about Vero that will turn everything about this open and shut drunk driving case on its head and leave Sgt Wyatt with one whopping headache.
Sgt Wyatt decides to enlist the help of his new girlfriend, private investigator Tessa Leoni, who in turn recruits the services of DD Warren, a police officer (all characters from previous Gardner novels, by the way), but the case just gets murkier with each addition. Of course, it doesn't help that Nicky can't remember anything, including much of her past. Just who is Nicky Frank? Is Vero even real? And what does Thomas have to hide?
So many questions, but patient readers will find answers to them all after navigating the twisted maze that Gardner intricately weaves.
If you're in the mood for a psychological thriller with a plot that gets murkier with every page, but clearer with every few chapters, Crash & Burn is for you. It is complex, not complicated, and borderline convoluted. In fact, it's a very rewarding read if you stick with it.
It's a shame that writers like Lisa Gardner don't get the same amount of publicity or fame as a Stephanie Meyer or EL James. Maybe if she started writing about vampires or misogyny. Now, that would truly be crashing and burning.
rohit@khaleejtimes.com

What book(s) are you reading right now?
 

• Editor's Picks