RUNNER 13

Like any extreme sport, ultrarunning can be dangerous, and it proves deadly in this thriller set in the Sahara Desert.

Elite runner Adrienne Wendell, who lives in England’s Lake District with her 10-year-old son, Ethan, is in Morocco to participate in the 250-mile Hot & Sandy race; it’s organized by enigmatic impresario Boones, who has, as Adrienne puts it, dedicated his life to “finding out the limit of human endurance.” Adrienne hasn’t raced in seven years—not since she was met at the finish line of the Yorkshire 100 by police informing her that Ethan had nearly been hit by a black Range Rover that seemed to be targeting him before it fled the scene. Of course, Adrienne has agreed to participate in Hot & Sandy: Her invitation arrived bearing the words “COME AND FIND ANSWERS” above a license plate number; results from Adrienne’s online sleuthing link the plate to a black Range Rover. But Adrienne brings her own whiff of villainy to Hot & Sandy: Just before Ethan’s accident, something happened at a runners’ training camp in Ibiza that has made her a pariah in the running scene. The novel’s slow-drip reveal regarding what occurred in Ibiza is abetted by a second narrator: Stella Mamoud, who is attending Hot & Sandy because her fiancé, Adrienne’s ex-husband, is participating. (Stella also happens to be Boones’ estranged daughter). This novel about extreme behavior in the world of extreme sports won’t win any prizes for extreme plausibility, and cliches and pat psychology clot the writing. Regardless, readers should remain absorbed by the elaborate plot’s multiple lines of inquiry: What happened in Ibiza? Who will win Hot & Sandy? And who is incapacitating runners more effectively than even the punishing Saharan sandstorms and immobilizing heat?

A diverting if plausibility-testing thriller.