All the Things You Are

As this slick but superficial thriller from Hughes (City of Lost Girls) begins, suburban housewife Clare Taylor returns to her Madison, Wis., home to find husband Danny Brogan and their daughters gone, and her beloved dog, Mr. Smith, savagely dismembered. By the time Clare brings the police back to her home, her slaughtered pet has vanished, replaced by something even more disquieting: the body of the man she knows only as a childhood friend of Danny’s, Gene Peterson. Stalked by determined killers, shocked by unexpected revelations about her family, Clare will have to unravel a mystery at whose core is Danny’s most closely guarded secret: that it was he who 35 years earlier set the fire that killed Clare’s parents and siblings. Hughes, who lives in Dublin, renders his Midwestern American setting with a specificity that somehow never quite becomes convincing. Though he has created an effective puzzle, rife with misdirection and unreliable protagonists, the work falls short. (June)