Time and Chance

Hopkins, a veteran and lawyer, has trouble integrating John's battlefield flashbacks into the story arc, but the intermittent covert-ops procedural of the main narrative is mostly handled in a spare and convincing style. Appended are two poignant short stories, about a boy confronting his divorced mother's suicide attempt and a man coping with his father's impending death. Despite occasional patches of clumsy writing, Hopkins invests this hybrid thriller/love story with palpable psychological resonance. -Kirkus Discoveries