by Lois Gould
In her previous works (including Medusa's Gift and Such Good Friends), Gould has proved herself a remarkably taut and evocative novelist, able to wring the most out of character and plot with no wasted words. Spanning a three-day vintage car rally in Northern Ireland, No Brakes is a mere 176 pages, but the book revs with eroticism and suspense. Its narrator, Mary Jo, an American woman, is navigator to the charismatic Ludo, a road warrior and bad boy (he also happens to be her son's best friend), whose allure she cannot resist. No sooner do they drive out of Belfast than a bridge blows up behind them. Rumors spread—that a terrorist plot is brewing, that one of the rally cars is toting explosives, that a rebellious British princess is involved—and the narrator finds herself sucked into the mire. Gould's prose is lyrical and her spectral characters linger in the imagination long after they have vanished from the page. (Holt, $22)
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