cover image Dead Time

Dead Time

Stephen White, . . Dutton, $25.95 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-525-95006-6

Bestseller White juggles too many story lines that never quite coalesce in his uneven 16th thriller to feature Boulder, Colo., psychologist Alan Gregory (after 2007's Dry Ice ). On a trip to Manhattan, soon after adopting the son of a close friend who died in a terrorist blast in Israel, Alan meets with his ex-wife, Merideth, who asks him to help her and her fiancé, political consultant Eric Leffler, track down their surrogate, who disappeared soon after becoming pregnant with their child. Initially reluctant, Alan eventually agrees to investigate. Aided by his Boulder detective friend, Sam Purdy, Alan gets drawn into a web of lies that stretches back to an ill-fated Grand Canyon hiking trip when Eric and the surrogate were in college together. White never recovers his rhythm after beginning the narrative with fractured accounts of the hiking expedition and then abruptly switching to Alan and Merideth's story. An unsatisfying climax and a distracting subplot involving a long-ago adoption make this one of the weaker entries in the series. (Mar.)