Phantom Instinct by Meg Gardiner is a new stand-alone thriller where an injured cop and an ex-thief hunt down a killer nobody else believes exist. Publisher: Dutton, June 2014

When shots ring out in a crowded L.A. club, bartender Harper Flynn watches helplessly as her boyfriend, Drew, is gunned down in the cross fire. Then somebody throws a Molotov cocktail, and the club is quickly engulfed in flames. L.A. Sheriff Deputy Aiden Garrison sees a gunman in a hoodie and gas mask taking aim at Harper, but before he can help her a wall collapses, bringing the building down and badly injuring him.

A year later, Harper is trying to rebuild her life. She has quit her job and gone back to college. Meanwhile, the investigation into the shoot-out has been closed. The two gunmen were killed when the building collapsed.

Certain that a third gunman escaped and is targeting the survivors, Harper enlists the help of Aiden Garrison, the only person willing to listen. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered has cut his career short and left him with Fregoli syndrome, a rare type of face blindness that causes the delusion that random people are actually a single person changing disguises.

As Harper and Aiden delve into the case, Harper realizes that her presence during the attack was no coincidence—and that her only ally is unstable, mistrustful of her, and seeing the same enemy everywhere he looks.

Meg has done it again. She’s written a fast-paced, action-filled and an intense drama that kept me riveted to the pages of this fascinating story of two lost souls who fight a fight that ends in a hail of an emotional tug of war. Every time I pick up a book my Meg Gardiner, I know she’s going to take me on a high-stakes roller coaster ride that keeps on going until the ride comes to a hard stop and I’m left wondering how it is all going to end. The author did a great job in capturing my attention that I did not want to put this book down and then she blew my mind with a surprising twist that I did not see coming. Whoa! This was a great read and I can’t wait to see what adventure Meg will take me on next.