The Lost Kings

Jeanie King—the narrator of this powerful if flawed psychological thriller from Johnson (The Wolves of Winter), who was hoping to put her traumatic childhood in Washington State behind her, including a father who may be a murderer and disappeared when she was 12—moves to her late mother’s native Britain, where she attends Oxford University. After graduation, she lands in a dead-end job and continues a dysfunctional relationship with a married professor that began at Oxford. Then investigative journalist Maddox, her first love in Washington, shows up. Maddox, who believes he has tracked down her dad in upstate New York, wants her to fly back to the U.S. Jeanie agrees to go, and as she wrestles with her roiling emotions—including the desire to punish her father for what she views as ruining her life and mistrust of Maddox’s motives—nightmarish but possibly suspect memories surge back. Suspenseful, surprising, and at times deeply disturbing, this portrait of a survivor who has yet to give herself permission to thrive climaxes with a devastating final twist, albeit one that will leave some readers feeling played. Tana French fans will find a lot to like. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Aug.)