Never Turn Back

Private school English teacher Ethan Faulkner, the narrator of this unsettling thriller set in Atlanta from Swann (Shadow of the Lions), returns home one morning after spending the night with a colleague, Marisa Devereaux, to find his troubled sister, Susannah, awaiting him. Susannah often disappears from Ethan’s life for months at a time, and they share the trauma of having witnessed their parents’ shooting murder when he was 13 and she was 10. Ethan made a promise to his dying father to look after Susannah, but his ambivalent feelings about her have meant he hasn’t done as good a job as he might. His more immediate concern is Marisa, who becomes obsessed with him and infiltrates his life, befriending Susannah. Susannah’s subsequent kidnapping raises the stakes, as does a murder, in which Ethan becomes a suspect. Haunted by the unknown gunmen who killed his parents, Ethan discovers a link between them and the new murder. Faulkner has a gift for language (“The twin memories of my parents are like a pair of blades scissoring my heart”), and smoothly quotes the likes of Robert Frost and Shakespeare. Fans of literary crime fiction will want to take a look at this thoughtful outing. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Foundry Literary + Media. (Oct.)