The Three Beths

A year after Beth Dunning disappeared from Lakehaven, Tex., in this gripping if flawed standalone from Thriller Award–winner Abbott (Blame), the primary suspect in the case remains Beth’s husband, who’s regularly harassed by the Lakehaven police chief and shunned by friends and neighbors. When Beth’s grown daughter, Mariah, catches a glimpse of Beth at a local mall, Mariah sets out to find her mother and absolve her father of blame. Aided by a former high school classmate and true-crime blogger, Mariah follows a tenuous link to a second woman with a similar first name: Bethany Curtis, the estranged wife of a tech millionaire, who went missing shortly before Beth did. In her painstaking pursuit of Bethany, Mariah stumbles into a family’s twisted web of blackmail, envy, and lies. The answer to the women’s disappearances seems to lie with a third “Beth,” the elusive Lizbeth, who vanished along with Bethany. Only the heavy-handed conclusion mars this high-voltage psychological thriller. Readers will be riveted until then. Five-city author tour. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown, Ltd. (Oct.)