Burning Distance

In 1981, 10-year-old Lizzy West, the protagonist of this uneven thriller from Leedom-Ackerman (The Dark Path to the River), is home alone in Washington, D.C., when she answers a phone call from a stranger, who instructs her to tell her mother to tell her father that “they’ve sanded his gas tank.” The next morning, Lizzy learns that her father has died in a plane crash in the Persian Gulf. Eventually, she also learns that her father worked for the CIA and that her mother believes he was murdered. In 1987, Lizzy’s family relocates to London, where she befriends Lebanese Palestinian classmate Adil Hasan, for whom she develops romantic feelings. Their relationship is complicated by Adil’s father being suspected of illegally transferring tools and technology to embargoed countries, which could enable them to build nuclear weapons. Gripping details about the weapons trade compensate only in part for some banal prose (“I alternated between wanting to save Adil from this life and wondering how I had fallen in love with the son of an arms dealer”) and a less than scintillating second murder mystery. Le Carré fans will be disappointed. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (Mar.)