The creator of dog-loving attorney Andy Carpenter (Dog Tags, 2010, etc.) serves up another stand-alone with an absolutely irresistible hook.

Hours after freelance journalist Richard Kilmer proposes to his girlfriend Jennifer Ryan in her parents' home in Ardmore, N.Y., a freak storm on the road throws her out of his wrecked car and into thin air. It's bad enough that the local cops can find no trace of his fiancée. Worse, there's no sign that she ever existed. The Ardmore house looks completely different; Jen's mother, who maintains that her husband and daughter died 20 years ago, denies ever having met Richard; even his Manhattan buddies tell him he must have imagined the woman he's certain he introduced to them. "What you're doing is remembering stuff that never happened," one of them tells him. A series of magazine articles that make Richard, if not exactly a hero, certainly a well-known crackpot, underwrite his inquiries into Sean Lassiter, the biochemical manufacturer he gradually becomes convinced is behind his troubles. With the help of a bulldog private eye, a sympathetic psychotherapist and a young woman who announces that she's the twin sister of his vanished fiancée, Richard follows the trail from his own travails to a shady neurological clinic and an international conspiracy.

As in Down to the Wire (2010), the explanation behind the hero's ordeal is both less interesting and less plausible than the nightmare itself. But no one who picks up this greased-lightning account will rest till it's finished.

Is freelance journalist Richard Kilmer losing his mind? How else can he explain the disappearance of his fiancée, Jennifer, after a roll-over accident with Richard at the wheel? His friends in New York seem to think she never existed, claiming that events he clearly remembers never took place. When he publishes an article about his experience, illustrated with an artist's re-creation of Jennifer's appearance, a woman named Allison telephones to say Jennifer looks like her twin sister, Julie, now gone missing. With Allison's help and that of trusted friends, Richard sets out to track down his past as an investigative journalist and the powerful individuals now manipulating not only every aspect of his life but also the state of his mind itself. VERDICT This bald plot summary fails to do justice to Rosenfelt's skill at throwing one baffling curve ball after another in a gripping thriller driven by questions of identity, the reliability of memory, and the difficulty of distinguishing between reality and fantasy. The author of seven Andy Carpenter novels (Dog Tags) offers yet another outstanding stand-alone novel (after Down to the Wire), sure to please his many fans. Anyone who enjoyed Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island will love this mind-boggling tale.—Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tuscon

At the start of this excellent stand-alone from Rosenfelt (Down to the Wire), 29-year-old journalist Richard Kilmer is planning to ask the love of his life, Jennifer Ryan, to marry him. But on a drive from Manhattan's Upper West Side, where they share an apartment, to Jen's hometown two hours outside the city, they have an accident and Jen disappears. After Richard discovers to his astonishment that Jen's family, her friends—even his friends—claim never to have known her, he begins a series of magazine articles about his unsettling experience (a nice variation on the frequent but unconvincing hush-hush imperative of many thrillers). Meanwhile, it becomes clear that some nefarious memory experiment involving Richard is underway. The arrival from Wisconsin of Allison Tynes, who says she's Jen's identical twin sister, may strike some as contrived, but all will marvel at the way Rosenfelt builds suspense while keeping the plot line from veering too far into the kooky and hokey. (Feb.)