Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Aleksander Szeser’s Dissonance follows Kira Hunt, a thirty-six-year-old Los Angeles physical therapist whose home life with philosophy-professor husband Max revolves around their three-year-old daughter, Rebecca. At a child’s birthday party, Rebecca hands Kira a message from a stranger who somehow knows where to find her. Kira recognizes the warning as connected to a past she has kept hidden from everyone around her, yet she refuses to explain what that past contains. Soon, the same white Audi appears near her family again, suggesting the message was only the beginning. When strangers move directly against Kira and Rebecca, the ordinary life Kira built starts closing around a secret she has protected for years. Someone has found her, and Kira must keep her family safe as she works out what the people hunting her actually know.
Aleksander Szeser’s Dissonance is an outstanding psychological thriller. The author keeps this fast-paced story fully loaded with danger through people whose histories contradict what they say. Kira Hunt is a fantastic lead, fiercely devoted to Rebecca with instincts that make every threat around her feel frighteningly real. I love Detective Parker Smiley, an LAPD investigator whose forthright manner brings real attitude to her exchanges with veteran detective Lowell Thorn. The dialogue is just as strong, like Barbara Thorn turning introductions at a child’s birthday party into displays of social status. Still, it’s the near-cinematic descriptions of place that steal the scenes, from desert heat flattening scrub-covered rock along an open road, to a polished hotel suite glowing beneath the Las Vegas skyline. Szeser gives those surroundings the same intensity as the people moving through them, making Kira’s world feel increasingly dangerous wherever she goes. Well written and seriously exciting, readers who enjoy intelligent psychological thrillers will adore this.
