Dream Queen

Thornton's gripping sixth mystery featuring victim's advocate Chloe Newcombe (after 2008's A Song for You) charts her earlier years, long before she moved to Arizona. Two years after her older brother, James, died of AIDS in California, Chloe, then a New York City PI, travels to Dudley, Ariz., a small town where Tucson therapist Hal, James's surviving partner, has a home, and where Danny, her younger brother, has fallen for Kristi Marsh, a beautiful but troubled woman. Danny and Kristi meet Chloe at the airport, but en route to Dudley tragedy strikes—Danny disappears after they stop to fix his van at a garage while the two women wait at a diner across the street. Kristi also vanishes soon after they reach Hal's, but she's later found shot to death in a shack containing packages of a street drug called "Dream Queen." Kristi's stepfather, a therapist friend of Hal's, hires Chloe to investigate. As she uncovers a bizarre coverup, Chloe comes to some sticky realizations in this multilayered literary whodunit. (Aug.)