Fire in the Blood

Set in 2003, O’Brien’s impressive debut charts a soldier’s dogged search for the truth about his estranged wife’s death. Specialist Cooper, who’s been assigned to find hidden munitions in Afghanistan, is stunned when word reaches him that his wife, social worker Katherine Bellante, has been killed in the Bronx by a hit-and-run driver. With time running out before her funeral, and military bureaucracy moving slowly, Cooper goes AWOL so he can attend the service. In New York City, Cooper learns that the police are still investigating Katherine’s death and that she had been working at a rehab facility in the Bronx. At the facility, he’s puzzled by the removal of Katherine’s files by one of the doctors in charge. The revelation in the first chapter that Katherine was struck by a car in which an Albanian drug dealer was riding, along with a person he believed cheated him and had just abducted, heightens the suspense as Cooper relies on his professional skills to find out what happened. Fans of Nick Petrie’s Peter Ash novels will be pleased. Agent: Nathaniel Jacks, Inkwell Management. (Aug.)