Set just before and during the first weeks of the Covid-19 lockdown in Dublin, Ireland, this captivating tale from Edgar finalist Howard opens with something amiss in an apartment complex. Flash back 56 days. Oliver and Ciara, two shy people in their 20s, meet in a supermarket. Both have recently moved to Dublin and are alone, so lockdown seems like the perfect time to start a relationship. But as their courtship unfolds, so do their secrets, and Oliver becomes increasingly paranoid about the outside world--in particular about an older woman Ciara meets who gives her cryptic warnings about falling in love with him. Meanwhile, back in the present, police investigating a foul odor coming from an apartment discover a putrefying body in the shower. No fingerprints and no identification are found anywhere. As the link between the couple's outwardly simple yet complex romance and the murder becomes clearer through carefully doled out backstories, readers will find themselves rooting for these flawed characters no matter what their past indiscretions or crimes. Howard continues to impress. Agent: Jane Gregory, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.). (Aug.)

A pandemic lockdown romance that ends very badly indeed. It begins with a casual conversation about the Kennedy Space Center at a Dublin coffee shop. Architectural technologist Oliver Kennedy has never visited the place, and web services concierge Ciara Wyse thinks he really should. They take their coffees to a nearby park, they chat, he invites her to join him at a screening of a documentary about the space program. All super normal, apparently, but then comes the news of the first Irish Covid-19 infection, and then follows the first wave of restrictions, and the pair have to make a momentous decision. After a night at Ciara's tiny flat, Oliver offers to share the relatively palatial digs his employer, KB Studios, has allotted him as part of his compensation package. The two of them stock up on every necessity they can imagine and prepare to hunker down in the Crossings till the storm has passed. But Howard, in a series of lightning dips into the past and future utterly characteristic of her suspense stories, has already broadcast the endgame for their affair: the arrival of Garda DI Leah Riordan and DS Karl Connolly at the Crossings, summoned by a neighbor alarmed by the telltale stench seeping from Oliver's flat. The tenant, it turns out, was hiding a horrifying secret from Ciara and everyone else in Ireland, and there are depths still to be revealed beneath his deception. Each new twist, dispensed with surgical precision, will keep you hooked, nostalgic for the days when Covid-19 was the worst threat. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A blossoming attraction between two young Dublin professionals, in the days before COVID-19 reaches Ireland's shores, is the menacing departure point for Howard's stunning new thriller (following The Nothing Man). Ciara and Oliver notice each other over several chance run-ins at the local supermarket checkout and soon forge a connection with far-reaching and devastating consequences. They are swept up in the adrenaline of their mutual fascination, but their fragile new relationship is threatened by a state-mandated two-week lockdown as COVID-19 looms. Ciara and Oliver make the daring decision to move in together during the lockdown and to tell no one about the living situation (or who they really are to each other). But 56 days later, detectives discover the grisly remains of a decomposing body in Oliver's apartment. The clues are confounding, but it appears that the lockdown created truly ripe circumstances for murder. VERDICT Howard crafts likable characters, witty banter, and clever POV shifts throughout, but readers may need a strong neck to withstand the whiplash of frequent time jumps. This quibble aside, Howard has written an eerie, twisty story ripped from current headlines, in which a global pandemic becomes the foreboding hypotenuse of a dangerous love triangle.--Peggy Kurkowski, Westminster, CO