WHAT REMAINS

Gabra Zackman and Peter Ganim share the double first-person narration of Wendy Walker's new thriller in which Elise, a policewoman traumatized during a line-of-duty shooting, is stalked by a mysterious witness to the event. Meanwhile, her partner, Rowan, still recovering from wartime PTSD, is working the case from a different angle. We hear a great deal about stages of trauma recovery and what happens if you try to skip a stage or ignore therapeutic wisdom or lie to your psychiatrist. Some feels more like padding than plot or character development, or perhaps the text just needed a sharp red pencil, but the performances are smooth and accomplished, and Walker gets us where she wants to go without killing off anyone we've come to care about. B.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2023]