Black Hammock Island

Oren, the protagonist of Wiley’s uneven third Daniel Turner thriller (after 2015’s Second Skin), was left for dead as an eight-year-old when his mother and her lover, Walter, murdered his father, Amon, at his family’s house on Florida’s Black Hammock Island. A family friend rescued Oren and took him to Atlanta, where he grew up in safety. Eighteen years later, Oren drives from Atlanta to Florida with his girlfriend and three male companions to set in motion an elaborate plan for revenge. Meanwhile, homicide detective Turner, who knows only that Amon disappeared years ago, pursues what he suspects is a murder case. Wiley has a gift for short neo-gothic sentence fragments (“A slow kill. An orchestrated kill. A slow-motion war of obliteration”), but crisp prose makes up only in part for characters who often act unrealistically (Oren has ample time to narrate his life story to his now-grown sister, Lexi, in the attic of Walter’s house on the island while his friends assault its occupants below). Amon’s compelling backstory is a plus. [em]Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency. (June) [/em]