Dead Heat

The Lit-Crit Take: A genre-bending, character-driven, word-burning thriller about politics, love and the haunting pain of memory. The Pure Plot Pitch: I didn't know—or care—much about the tight race for governor of New York until someone took a shot at one of the candidates and killed his wife instead. The main suspect, it turns out, was an anti-government crazy (and a devoted quilter—yes, you heard that right) I once did time with. Searching for the killer, hoping to stop another attack, I was suddenly sucked into the panicky heart of a closely fought election campaign, an affair with a troubled political operative and the dangerously surreal world of people who prefer casting their vote with a sniper's bullet.