SHOT CLOCK

A former basketball player is yanked back into the game in an unexpected and remarkably suspenseful way.

Caitlin Glass never made it from Arizona State to the pros, but her first love, Garrett Streeter, did, joining Elijah Carter as one of the stars of the Cincinnati Sabertooths. That’s exactly why he needs help from Caitlin, who’s now a deputy in nearby Hill Haven, Ohio. Garrett’s kid brother, Jake, has been kidnapped by unidentified gamblers who threaten to kill him unless Garrett manages to fix the Sabertooths’ playoff games against the Las Vegas Lightning—by making sure that they win, or lose, or beat or don’t beat the point spread, depending on which game it is. Can his old flame find and rescue Jake without tipping off the police? No, she says, thinking of her husband and son and Garrett’s supermodel girlfriend, but of course you know she’ll change her mind. Crosscutting relentlessly between the games Garrett is supposed to fix and Caitlin’s one-step-forward investigations, which quickly narrow her suspect list to brothel owner Silas Bennett and Russian gangster Alexei Maxim, Bourelle keeps the action popping on and off the court. As Caitlin muses that “life was mostly looking at the clock and knowing you were running out of time,” Garrett races through the first six games of the playoffs, each of them spiked with different surprises. But the biggest surprises will have to wait for (spoiler alert) that seventh game.

A ruthlessly stripped-down novel bound to lure in both basketball fans and those who’d never watch a game.