Phantom Instinct by Meg Gardiner

I've read a few Meg Gardiner books before, and I think I found her because she had a good quote from Stephen King on her book jacket.  (If I'm not mistaken, I think she may have dedicated one of her books to Stephen King).


In any event, I enjoy the Jo Beckett novels, but have never been able to get into the Evan Delaney novels.  I've enjoyed each of Ms. Gardiner's stand alone novels, and I'm a little unsure whether Phantom Instinct is a stand alone novel or the beginning of a new series featuring Harper Flynn and Aiden Garrison.


The reason I like the Jo Beckett novels is that I like the profession of the protagonist, she has a hobby (rock climbing), a sense of décor and style, and comes across to me as a complete and fully formed character.  The Evan Delaney novels seem very plot driven to me, lots of action and just aren't as much to my taste.


Phantom Instinct gives us a character I enjoyed reading about, in Aiden Garrison, but who has a traumatic brain injury (I know I said I'd stop reading books about that, but this was on my pile before... it confirms my resolve
Read While Walking: Unreliable Narrator vs Subjective Narration vs Selective Narration).


In any event, the traumatic brain injury is treated mostly fairly here.  Despite how rare it is, the Fregoli syndrome is telegraphed early, and used to create the twist and character growth at the end.  Whether protagonists and antagonists would all be familiar with the nuances of an extremely rare delusion symptom is perhaps a more difficult question to answer, but as I said, I liked Aiden Garrison, thought his symptom played fair by narrative standards, and didn't object to the resolution and character growth (whether or not it's possible to overcome such a mental health issue by willpower alone).


The antagonists were very thinly drawn, and I had a great deal of difficulty accepting some of the motivations.  I think the novel is supposed to be fast paced enough to gloss over much of that, (another theme of traumatic brain injury books perhaps) and for the most part it succeeds with the timeline driven plot elements. 


My biggest challenge was in accepting Harper Flynn as a protagonist and a character.  Fluent in Russian, a cryptographer, naval officer, stunt driver and full time student (not making any of that up), she's got lots of character elements, but somehow still seems to be the girl in distress for most of the book.  Her personality at the end remained a bit of a cipher for me, and Ms. Gardiner seemed to focus on making her character growth and development related to her romantic interests.  I didn't see her making any deductive breakthroughs, instead mostly filling the role of providing the love of a good woman for a damaged man.  It's not what I expect of Ms Gardiner's female protagonists, so perhaps I'm doing Harper a disservice.  That's why I thought this is potentially the start of a new series.  I'm not sure what the purpose of all those character elements are if they're not going to be used to any great effect.  That said, I'm not sure if I'd be inclined to read another of the series, though I'd still return to read another Jo Beckett novel.