SINCE WE FELL by Dennis Lehane

Rachel is a TV journalist who wants to find out who her father is.  Her mother has died and has always refused to divulge his identity.  Then Rachel’s career and her marriage take a nosedive after she has an on-air panic attack in Haiti.  We know from the prologue that Rachel will shoot her husband but apparently not her first husband.  Her second husband is Brian, a former private detective whom Rachel had tried to hire to find her father.  After the Haiti fiasco, Rachel becomes increasingly reclusive and rarely ventures outside her home, but Brian encourages her to face her fears.  Except for the violent prologue, we would wonder if Lehane has moved from thrillers to character studies, and with a rare female protagonist to boot.  Then Rachel discovers that Brian may be leading a double life, and the real action begins, in more or less typical Lehane fashion, with lots of twists and turns.  One reviewer suggested that the author wrote this book with a movie deal in mind, but I can’t complain.  I will want to see the movie, too.