The Sunshine Man

A Wiltshire woman stalks her sister’s killer in this mournful crime thriller from British novelist Stonex (The Lamplighters). One morning in 1989, Bridget Keller learns that James Maguire is being released from prison after serving 18 years for murdering her younger sister, Providence. Bridget sees her husband off on a business trip, arranges for her mother-in-law to collect her kids after school, and retrieves the gun she secretly purchased in anticipation of this day. She then departs for London, prepared to tail James until the moment is right for her to exact justice. Meanwhile, an oblivious James carries out his own agenda, assisted by a daughter he barely knows. Stonex’s sophomore effort is at once a rage-fueled revenge tale and a heartbreaking exploration of memory’s fallibility, compassion’s power, and violence’s cyclical nature. Childhood flashbacks are peppered throughout Bridget’s anguished first-person narration, while letters and journal entries James wrote in prison add context to third-person chapters that chronicle his postincarceration struggles. Slack pacing occasionally saps the narrative of momentum, but fans of sinuous slow burns will be entertained. (Nov.)