A frenetic thriller with nuanced characters and a twist.
Tanz’s (Silk on the Rocks, 2012, etc.) latest thriller follows a female serial killer, the killer’s pursuing detectives and the strange links between them in the author’s third installment of his Philadelphia-based crime series.
Jaime Valle is that classic girl next door—she’s attractive, holds a middle-class job as a dental technician and maintains friendships with neighbors and co-workers. Behind that facade, however, lies a crafty, aggressive mind that is bent on avenging her husband’s death. Valle’s target is the health-insurance company that failed to approve her husband’s surgery for a heart condition. The widow’s seemingly amiable nature is the ideal cover as she plots the murders of two people who work for the insurance company—all while continuing to show up for work and lunch dates. Meanwhile, a fellow assassin and familiar character within Tanz’s series, Julian Gando, attempts to go underground and start a new life within the witness protection program. Whether he’s describing the chilly winter nights in Philly or the humid days in Florida, the author creates compelling, well-told stories about the tango between cops and criminals. This book’s most interesting relationship may be between brothers Stephen and Michael Davis, two police detectives for whom love and brotherhood are hard to understand and find. Michael, whose war injuries force him to use a wheelchair, is the book’s most sympathetic character as he tries to understand his more successful brother, his budding fascination with Jaime Valle and his allegiance to the police force, which has named Valle as its top suspect. Tanz keeps his writing focused and smooth, offering in-depth details of police investigations, strong character development and fast-paced conversations among his complex and flawed heroes.
A frenetic thriller with nuanced characters and a twist.Pub Date: April 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482309096
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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