The Bottom Line: A must-read domestic thriller. Fans of Linwood Barclay should move Fractured to the top of their reading queue.
Fractured begins in Florida as struggling novelist Stu Harvey and his pregnant wife Lisa brace for a hurricane. Their marriage, already strained by grief over a drowned son, is compounded by financial stress. Just as the storm knocks the power out, Lisa goes into labor. Stu’s frantic drive to the ER ends in yet another tragedy.
Author Jason Melby throws his reluctant hero yet another challenge when his publisher abruptly cancels both his book advance and book tour. A potential lifeline comes as he’s summoned to Nashville and offered an unusual assignment: ghostwrite the biography of Simon Hollis, a former country music star newly released from prison after serving twenty years for three murders.
Stu is a temperamental artist who would never dream of working as a mere ghostwriter. The only thing is, as Melby brilliantly illustrates, he’s absolutely desperate. Adding to the drama is the fact that Hollis, who was recently exonerated by DNA evidence, exudes menace. The more time spent with Hollis, the more Stu wonders whether the ex-con may in fact be an active serial killer.
Melby, who wrote the terrific Psychopathic, is back with another winner in a sharply different lane. Here, Melby’s skill lies in the way he balances domestic trauma with the ominous hum of murder. Lisa, hollowed by loss yet searching for a way forward, embodies the novel’s aching core. Royce Vogel, Stu’s ambitious and flawed literary agent, pushes Stu toward the deal that could make or break him. Detective Blaire Rossi, meanwhile, emerges as a sharp, skeptical presence. Her investigation into Hollis offers a procedural counterpoint to the Harveys’ unraveling home.
Each voice sharpens the story’s edges, ensuring that no scene feels safe from emotional or physical threat. But Hollis himself is Melby’s ultimate triumph. Charismatic, enigmatic, and unsettling in ways that even freedom can’t disguise, it’s safe to say that Hollis redefines the very meaning of “outlaw country.”
