Abby had been on the fringes of the PI game only a few months, but already she understood what sustained the profession: people lied, and people were stupid.

I am, and have never concealed it, an unreconstructed male chauvinist. For this reason I avoid action novels with female protagonists – I don’t like to see women put in harm’s way.

In spite of that, I bought Michael Koryta’s If She Wakes, just because he’s such a fine writer, and I seem to have run through all his male protagonists for the present. And I can report that it’s a superior, intensely gripping novel.

Tara Beckley is a student at a New England college. She’s assigned to drive a visiting dignitary to his lecture, but he unaccountably insists on taking a detour. Then an auto accident happens. When Tara next awakens, she’s in a hospital, coming out of a coma. She sees, hears, and understands everything going on around her. But no one can tell, because she cannot move any part of her body. She’s “locked in.” To her horror, as she listens, her family discusses turning off her life support. Suddenly, her only hope is in her protective, gratifyingly stubborn older sister.

Abby Kaplan is a former race driver who transitioned to Hollywood stunt work. Life was great until one driving mistake left her movie star boyfriend dead. Now she’s phobic about driving. A friend got her a job as an insurance adjustor, and she’s assigned to examine Tara’s accident scene. But something’s wrong there. The driver’s account doesn’t match the evidence. She does not know that her assessment is very important to a particular group of people, people who will spare neither money nor human lives to get hold of a particular object, an object whose location only the paralyzed Tara Beckley knows.

If She Wakes was an extremely good thriller, full of twists and surprises; the kind of story where we fear for the protagonists even as we root for them to overcome their obstacles and grow as human beings. Well worth reading, with cautions for the usual things.