Tunnel Vision (review)

It all happens so fast. One moment Liza Wellington is elbowing her way through a bunch of rowdy men in an underpass near her house; the next moment Mom is yelling a warning to her from the yard; and then there’s a gun blast and Mom’s on the ground in a pool of blood. Before Liza and her father can get an emotional grip on their loss, the police have informed them that Liza was likely the intended victim, and the pair are hustled into the witness-protection program and whisked out of town with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Shaw concocts a dandy thriller, giving equal attention to the devastating emotional toll exacted by the Wellingtons’ inability to grieve and find closure for Liza’s mother’s death, and their constant anxiety at being pursued, discovered, and relocated again and again. There’s some clunky authorial contrivance (Dad’s career is handily untroubled by their going underground, for instance), but the breakneck pacing and unresolved ending easily trump that glitch. Exhausted the Caroline Cooney books? Step right this way.