I enjoy the Lisa Gardner novels, particularly the D.D. Warren series. Crash & Burn includes (I hesitate to say "features") Tessa Leoni, from Love You More. I recall reading Love You More, and I definitely recall the cover (the swingset with the red swing, the rainy, wintry look). Unfortunately I don't recall a lot of the details specifically. I do recall I read it quickly; it was a fast paced book, but was slightly confused by the plot, and didn't think the mystery quite worked as it should. I also recall trying to remember how it ended, and when I read Touch & Go I recall flipping through the last couple of chapters to refresh myself with the ending, but I don't currently remember the ending after my second attempt either.
All of which is probably a good introduction for Crash & Burn, which has a victim suffering from a traumatic brain injury and is uncertain of her own memories. The main detective is Wyatt Foster, who is dating Tessa Leoni. As noted, my memory of Tessa's introductory novel has a lot of gaps, so I can't tell how much there is in the way of callbacks and plot development in the overarching series, but Crash & Burn provides sufficient background to be able to follow along generally. D.D. Warren is at best a cameo appearance in this novel, but I really liked Wyatt Foster as a detective.
The novel moves at a quick pace, obscuring bits of information which the narrator, Nicky Frank, can't access due to her faulty memory. The story really drives forward, leaving little time for thought or reflection. At times I found the hidden memory technique a bit more frustrating than suspenseful, but I really enjoy the idea of solving long hidden mysteries, and I was prepared to accept it for the fast pace of the novel. That being said, although Love You More was also frantically paced, I think in this novel the plot elements will hang together on reconsideration, and the pace is not simply to zoom over potential p(l)otholes.
One aspect that I think works very well is the pace of the investigation for Wyatt Foster. He seems to be taking it slowly and methodically at first, but the pace of his investigation increases at the same time as he becomes increasingly sleep deprived. It helps the novel keep moving at breakneck speed, and if the reader slows down to think of questions Wyatt should be asking and leads he should be pursuing, it's easy to see how he gets caught up with artificial deadlines and lines of inquiry and lets some of the threads slip through his fingers. In that regard, I think he and Tessa could make a very effective partnership. She could be cool and methodical, while he's the people person using dialogue and hunches as his investigative techniques. That's one of those things that I think gets overlooked in a lot of police procedurals. When you have the case that has the lead investigators going days without sleep, they aren't going to be able to operate at the same mental speed as they could in the early days, and their investigative leaps are not going to be stunning leaps of logic, but more often questionable and impulsive inferences. Ms. Gardner had a very effective and subtle way of making that point, in a way which still resolves the mystery and retains the respect the reader has for Wyatt.
A final note, is that I thought D.D.'s information about the discovery of a clue would have been much more effective and would have said a lot more about her relationship with Tessa if she was in fact just inventing it out of whole cloth. I was somewhat disappointed with the way that aspect was resolved, and thought it could have given readers more insight into D.D. and her future. I suspect the resolution was done to leave the door open for D.D. to join Tessa's firm, but I don't see the two of them working well together, and think D.D. will always need to be a cop.
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