Blackout: A Pete Fernandez Mystery

Early in Segura’s convoluted fourth mystery featuring recovering alcoholic Pete Fernandez (after 2017’s Dangerous Ends), Ellen McRyan walks into Fernandez Investigations, located in a Spring Valley, N.Y., strip mall. Ellen is the wife of ambitious, charismatic Florida state senator Trevor McRyan, who’s running for governor, and they want to hire Pete to find their errant son, Stephan. Pete is shocked to recognize the man in the photo she shows him. In 1998, Patty Morales, a Miami, Fla., high school senior on whom Pete had a crush, went missing; 15 years later, the person in the photo, who he knew as Kenny Sampson, offered the police a lead in the case before disappearing. At first, Pete refuses to help the McRyans, but in the end he reluctantly returns to his hometown, where he reconnects with his former PI partner, Kathy Bentley. Pete and Kathy’s search for Stephan/Kenny turns into a hunt for Patty’s killer. A story this bleak needs a really distinctive character to carry it, but unfortunately Pete doesn’t measure up. Agent: Dara Hyde, Hill Nadel Literary Agency. (May)