Tim Wynne-Jones has proven himself a master of the suspense genre in books like the Rex Zero series and novels for older readers such as THE UNINVITED. Now, in BLINK & CAUTION, he demonstrates that he can balance a complicated suspense plot with equally sophisticated character development, in what is simultaneously a road trip novel, a mystery, and a romance between two lost and damaged souls.

Blink (also known as Brent) has been living on the streets for a while now, fending for himself by sneaking into fancy hotels and rummaging through the detritus of room service trays. It's not such a bad life --- until hotel security finds you. Or, in the case of one pivotal morning, until you happen to witness a high-profile crime.

Blink is not sure what he sees when he happens upon a scuffle between a bunch of powerful-looking men. When he recovers their hotel room key, he comes across what looks like the aftermath of a robbery, not to mention a wallet stuffed with several hundred dollars in cash. But when Blink realizes that one of the men he saw leaving the hotel room under his own power is actually an investor supposedly nabbed in a high-stakes kidnapping, the things he saw with his own two eyes don't quite add up to the reports on the evening news. How can he leverage his eyewitness account (and the smartphone he stole from the victim) into a way off the streets?

Meanwhile, Caution ("as in Slippery When Wet; Caution, as in Harmful If Swallowed; Caution, as in Toxic") Pettigrew is also on the run. She's been convinced for months that she deserves nothing more than to die. But even though her drug-dealing boyfriend is a serious loser who beats her up plenty, he has so far failed to put her out of her misery. So when she comes into a little cash of her own, she takes her revenge on her boyfriend and seeks out the family she's been distancing herself from for months.

Before long, these two runaways on the streets of Toronto cross paths, and Caution convinces Blink to trust her, for better or for worse. As they travel outside the city to investigate the truth of the kidnapping claims, both start to let down the defenses they've so carefully constructed, revealing their true selves even as they uncover the truth about the crime.

Caution tells Blink at one point that she feels like "we're actually driving to somewhere that doesn't exist on a mission that can't be completed. That's purgatory maybe." Purgatory as a state of mind, as a condition of being alone, in between, aimless --- that's what drives this novel, and what brings Blink and Caution together. They're each so convinced of their lack of value that they don't quite know how to react when they begin to recognize value in each other.

BLINK & CAUTION is a fundamentally hopeful book, about the long road back from the darkest places to somewhere resembling hope. Tim Wynne-Jones pulls no punches in his descriptions of his protagonists' darkest days, but he also offers a compelling and convincing path to redemption for each of them.

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