Flame Out: A Novel

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

June Lyons, the former FBI-agent-turned-small-town-cop introduced in the acclaimed Ice Shear must solve two connected cases whose roots stretch back decades in timeand dangerously touch the lives of those closest to her.

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. Spotting a slick of gasoline running across the parking lot of an old apparel factory, she quickly heads inside the building, where she discovers an unconscious woman too close to the flame. The fire destroys the building down to its sub-basements, and the badly burned woman June rescued is in a coma. No one knows who she is or how she got there.

Thirty years ago, Junes father made a name for himself when he arrested the factorys owner, Bernie Mede, for killing his wife and child, though their bodies were never found. Sifting through the factorys ruins, June and her partner Dave Batko discover a womans body sealed in a barrel. Surely, its Luisa Mede and the case file can be closed. But the body isnt Bernies wife, its Daves mother, a troubled party-girl who disappeared when Dave was young.

As June and her neighbors discover, beneath Hopewell Falls charming faade lies some unbearably ugly truthssecrets that are only beginning to surface. With the case growing more complex, she teams with FBI Special Agent Hale Bascom to find answersbefore everyone she loves, and the town itself, spin dangerously out of control.

Reviews

Praise for Flame Out: "Solid second police procedural ... assuring readers that today's women cops and perps can both be tougher than their male counterparts." -- Publishers Weekly "Fast-paced mystery that brings readers in quickly and endears them to June right away ... will anxiously await June's next adventure." -- RT Book Reviews "A haunting, expertly-constructed mystery in which the past is a burning fuse that leads straight to the present." -- Lou Berney, Edgar Award-nominated author of The Long and Faraway Gone

Author Bio

M. P. Cooley's crime novel Ice Shear was named one of O, The Oprah Magazine's Best Books of Summer 2014 and was called "an excellent debut" by Publishers Weekly in their starred review. A native of upstate New York, Cooley currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.