The Blaze

October 15, 2019
A combat veteran returns from Iraq with a traumatic brain injury and must confront a forgotten past in this literary thriller by the author of Champion of the World (2016). Matthew Rose only returns home to Montana to take care of affairs after his father's suicide. He meets up with Georgie Porter, his ex-best friend and a reporter for the local newspaper. Thanks to an IED in Baghdad, "his memory had been scrubbed clean," so he doesn't remember her or anyone else he used to know in Montana. But people know him. Walking late at night, he witnesses a house fire and sees an apparently homeless man leaving the scene. Abigail Green has been housesitting for the lesbian couple who owns the house, and her death in the fire leads the police to suspect a hate crime against the owners. But a cop tells Georgie, "There's a lot more going on here than you know....She's not who you think she is." Bits of memory slowly return to Matthew while Georgie digs deeply into the tragedy for the newspaper. A candy store had burned years before, and Matthew is troubled at the thought he might have been involved somehow. Now a police officer is murdered, another house is set ablaze, and Matthew nearly drowns in a frozen river. Matthew and Georgie both sense that connections exist between past and present tragedies, but what could they possibly be? The renewed friendship is tentative and platonic for the two main characters, who both care deeply about the truth. In time they make a terrible discovery that leaves their own fates uncertain. A wounded veteran and a strong newspaperwoman combine with a well-constructed plot to spin a plausible and engaging tale. It brings to mind Owen Laukkanen's Deception Cove with its pairing of solid male and female protagonists. This one wins far more on characters and danger than on bloodshed. Keep books like this coming, Chad Dundas.

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Starred review from October 21, 2019
Army veteran Matthew Rose, the hero of this exceptional thriller from Dundas (Champion of the World), returns to his home town of Missoula, Mont., to settle the affairs of his estranged father, who recently committed suicide. Due to a brain injury Matthew suffered while stationed in Iraq, he has forgotten much of his childhood, including the falling out with his father, a poet and former community leader, and the breakup with his high school sweetheart, Georgie Porter, now a reporter who picks him up at the airport. Through Georgie, Matthew learns that he went from being a golden boy in academics and sports to being a withdrawn, unambitious teenager and a risk taker—a quality that he carried through to his military tour. Witnessing a house fire in which a college student is killed triggers Matthew’s memory of another fire that happened 15 years earlier. Looking into the new fire, Matthew is in danger as more murders and fires occur. Matthew and Georgie find a link to the old, unsolved fire that leads to a couple of unsolved crimes that may have haunted his father. Dundas’s insightful look at a former soldier’s attempts to reenter civilian life elevates this poignant, action-packed story. The plot soars with each believable twist and realistic characters worth rooting for. Agent: Julie Stevenson, Massie & McQuilkin.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
Here's another brilliantly woven story about second chances from Montana native Dundas, author of the highly acclaimed historical novel Champion of the World (2016). This one is a thriller about an Iraq War veteran who returns to his hometown in Montana when his father dies. Matthew Rose is suffering from a traumatic brain injury?the signature wound of modern warfare. His grasp of the present is barely more tenuous than his memories of the past, which only come to him in snatches within bad dreams. He meets up with an old friend, Georgie, with no recollection that he once broke her heart. Matthew learns from her that they were two happy kids raised by academic hippie parents, but sometime in his teens he slipped into an inexplicable vacant state?pointing to an earlier trauma. Then he left and joined the army. On his first night back, Matthew witnesses a raging fire that ignites an unsettling recollection of a long-ago fire, the two events ultimately colliding in his mind, and he follows the dangerous path that crisscrosses between them. As sure as Matthew deserves a medal, so, too, does small-town journalist Georgie, not only for her support of him, but also for her compelling drive to find the truth. Recommend this to readers looking for an inviting narrative with a very now feel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)