I Would Die for You

A British expat’s connection to a defunct rock band comes back to haunt her in this sturdy thriller from Jones (The Trade Off). Over the past 10 years, Nicole Forbes has built a comfortable life in Coronado, Calif., with her husband and young daughter, Hannah. That stability gets shaken by a visit from writer Zoe Mortimer, who’s working on a book about the popular 1980s band Secret Oktober and wants to know about Forbes’s relationship with one of its members. Twenty-five years earlier, Secret Oktober stopped performing under mysterious circumstances that gave rise to a slew of conspiracy theories, but Nicole knows the truth—and she doesn’t want to share it. While Nicole considers what to do about Zoe’s inquiry, a stranger posing as Hannah’s aunt abducts the girl from school. Flashbacks to 1986 flesh out the grisly truth about Nicole’s connections to Secret Oktober and gradually link those events to her desperate search for Hannah in the present. While a few plot beats land on the predictable side, Jones makes good use of alternating timelines to build tension, and Nicole’s maternal nightmare feels frighteningly real. This is a good bet for fans of Lisa Unger. (Mar.)