Flame Out: A Novel

As a police officer in the Rust Belt town of Hopewell Falls, New York, June Lyons keeps an eye on the abandoned factories that line the Mohawk River. On patrol she spots a slick of gasoline running across the parking lot of an old apparel factory; inside, an unconscious woman lies near smoldering piles of old fabric. The fire destroys the building down to its subbasements, and the badly burned woman June rescued is in a coma. No one knows who she is or how she got there.

Thirty years earlier, June’s father arrested the factory’s owner, Bernie Lawler, for killing his wife and child, though their bodies were never found. Sifting through the factory’s ruins, June and her partner discover a woman’s body sealed in a barrel. They’re sure that the body will be Luisa Lawler’s and her cold case file will finally be closed. But the body isn’t Bernie’s wife’s, and the discovery triggers a new cycle of violence and revenge that threatens to destroy her family and friends.

Beneath Hopewell Falls’s small-town facade lie secrets that are only beginning to surface, and with the case growing more complex, June teams with FBI Special Agent Hale Bascom to find the truth-before everyone she loves, and the town itself, spins dangerously out of control.