Debuting with last year’s THE BONES OF YOU, Debbie Howells set the psychological thriller bar at pole-vaulter height.

In her second psychological thriller, Noah Calaway is “unable to picture April as someone who isn’t vital and beautiful and brilliantly alive.” April Moon had captured Noah’s heart 25 years before and abruptly ended their engagement nine years later. Noah “was over the indignity of being unceremoniously dumped.” That is, until Will Farrington, Noah’s school chum and rival for April’s affection, phones to inform that she is now comatose from a drug overdose --- and the prime suspect in her stepfather’s homicide.

"With more twists and turns than human intestines, the characters’ gut-wrenchingly tragic lives are tempered by one’s triumph over injustice..."

Although Will “has a ruthless streak,” he went on to become a renowned cardiac surgeon and married a superstar performer. Meanwhile, Noah’s legal career languished, and he later became a marginally successful writer. His literary specialty is “psychological profiles --- of murderers.”

And then there’s no-last-name Ella, a precocious teen forced to visit a psychologist. These present-day psych sessions told in italicized first person dialogue help tassel-tie loose threads of this somewhat complicated novel.

Orienting readers are well-marked dates: 1991 (when Noah was 14); ’95-’97 (Noah and Will are university roomies); ’99-’00 (Noah’s engagement with April); and 2016 (Noah is now 39). Events that happen during these times are like cards used to construct a tenuous house.

As a sundial casts shadows in various directions, this complex thriller’s time-warp eccentricities refract literary prisms marking significant periods of time. With more twists and turns than human intestines, the characters’ gut-wrenchingly tragic lives are tempered by one’s triumph over injustice and coming to terms with “how breathtakingly cruel life can be.”