Photograph

In this immersive standalone from Freeman (The Bourne Vendetta), Florida PI Shannon Wells grapples with haunting visions while trying to make sense of a particularly confounding job. When Faith Selby hires Shannon to look into her own past, Shannon can’t find much. Then Faith is murdered, and her daughter, Kate, approaches Shannon with an enigmatic clue: a 26-year-old photograph of a young girl, taken by Faith in a motel parking lot. Shannon’s quest to figure out the photo’s origins takes her to Michigan, where she teams up with police detective Chuck Kimble and learns the photo may be linked to a cold case murder from 1999. All the while, Shannon is plagued by memories of a past sexual assault and nightmares of witnessing the murder of a woman named Jenny. Freeman’s plotting is intoxicatingly knotty, though a few of the answers he provides are far-fetched. Still, well-developed characters and the author’s sharp attention to detail make this work more often than not. Psychological thriller fans who are willing to suspend their disbelief should enjoy themselves. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider. (Oct.)