Flatiron Books
Published October 28, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
A pipeline explosion in New Mexico catches the attention of a Homeland Security agent who works for an obscure department called “predictive analytics.” He’s on the case because they received a warning by phone before the explosion; he’s part of a small team that investigates situations where a tip comes in before a terrorist act. Normally, this leads the investigators to someone involved in the act, but in this case it’s puzzling. The person who called in the warning is a therapist in California who specializes in regression: helping her patients connect with a former life. She claims to have no information about what or who caused the explosion, which her patient described while in a therapeutic trance. This is either an elaborate ruse, or something in the treatment has gone down an unexpected path, a path that will lead the agent, the therapist, and her patient Marigold on a wild journey in pursuit of a body-hopping serial killer.
This compact, propulsive thriller mixes speculative science fiction with a serial killer narrative involving three main characters who have to figure out how the patient, Marigold, has connected to a Colorado detective who is currently alive and about to lose track of a murderer whose crime mimics the work of a notorious incarcerated killer. Marigold has somehow “regressed” to the future where the detective, decades hence, is dying of lung cancer. The question is whether the three can somehow intervene in the present day to catch the copycat killer before he escapes. What follows is a mind-bending journey to figure out how an imprisoned killer can be directing events outside the penitentiary walls, and what they can do to change the outcome.
The author is a seasoned film writer, and it shows. The writing is strong and the imagery vivid. The characters are all given opportunities to reveal themselves to the reader, if not always to one another, through strategically-placed vignettes that make them feel real without slowing the action. The plot drives forward on the premise of tantalizing philosophical concepts that don’t pause to explain themselves, making it possible to buy into the story even if, afterward, it’s hard to sort out what exactly was going on or whether it really holds together logically. Above all it’s an absorbing, occasionally funny, and provocative take on time travel that avoids the usual paradoxes by simply rushing ahead with characters who grab hold of our imaginations and won’t let go.