The String Diaries

British author Jones’s debut, an uneven paranormal thriller, fails to live up to the promise of its exciting first chapter. In present-day Wales, Hannah Wilde; her husband, Nate, who’s bleeding to death; and their nine-year-old daughter, Leah, are on the run from an unknown enemy. Chapter two flashes back to 1979 Balliol College, Oxford, where academic Charles Meredith, anxious about delivering a high-profile lecture, is unsettled by Nicole Dubois, an attractive woman who has taken over the library table he’s accustomed to using. Though Nicole continues to vex Charles, he finds himself fascinated with her, to the point of chasing her car at high speed when she flees town. The suspense builds, but not everyone will be satisfied with the eventual explanation for all these strange incidents. The sections set in the more distant past, starting in 1873 Hungary, drag, and the prose verges on the purple (e.g., “Teeth rained from his mouth, clattering onto the floorboards like ivory dice”). (July)