Storm Warning

Lost memories, bad actors, and natural disasters animate Goddard’s uneven latest (Hidden in the Night). Former U.S. military photographer Remi Grant is in Germany when a shooting at a café and an explosion a few hours later land her in the hospital without any memory of what happened between the incidents. When a shady stranger comes by the hospital to question her about it, she’s spooked and flees the country. She takes refuge at the Cedar Trails Lodge, a retreat in Washington State, where she hopes to recover her lost memory. Instead, she faces a series of increasingly perilous threats—ominous notes, lodge guests who might be spies, and eventually a catastrophic storm that forces her to rely on her faith (and fellow guest Hawk Beckett, a former military pilot) to survive. Individual scenes thrum with tension, but the narrative as a whole is undermined by contrivances. Remi’s memory loss in particular feels like a plot device, especially when she suddenly recovers the entire episode at the height of the present-day action. The result is an intermittently propulsive yet poorly constructed puzzle. (Feb.)