Loose Ends

Moody (Dancing in the Dark) packs this flimsy story with improbabilities, and making the characters comment “This is all too much of a coincidence” doesn’t fool the readers into ignoring the author’s clumsy engineering. Kate Lennox survived a car wreck in Ecuador that killed her dad, his assistant, and her stepmother and stepsister. She can’t remember much of that day or how the accident occurred, and it haunts her. Years later, she’s in England, trying to work through a recent divorce, find a job that will get her away from a man she thinks is stalking her, and get a place of her own; but each achievement connects her anew to that awful day in Ecuador. Moody’s stream-of-consciousness style bogs down with six different viewpoint characters, and her usual tight plotting has gone AWOL, leaving numerous threads unresolved. (Apr.)