A great premise generates some powerful episodes. Only the identification of the culprit is a letdown.
The creator of DI Tom Thorne presents a stand-alone whodunit with a most unusual setting: the psychiatric ward of a northwest London hospital.
DC Alice Armitage, who suffered an acute case of PTSD when her partner was stabbed to death during a routine search for a culprit, became so disturbed that she conked her boyfriend, Andy Flanagan, with a wine bottle and was committed to the Shackleton Unit of Hendon Community Hospital. At least that’s the story she tells everyone who’ll listen. Though it’s clear that Al is a patient in the Fleet Ward, however, it’s far from clear to anyone else that she was ever with Met homicide; it may be that she’s just as delusional as posh drug abuser Lucy, bipolar chess player Ilias, compulsive singer Lauren, kilt-wearing Tony, needy young Shaun, or Graham, who bangs his head so frequently against a wall that the staff keeps having to repaint the spot. Ordinarily the question of Al’s professional employment would be moot, but when Shaun’s lover, Kevin Connolly, is smothered with a pillow and drugs are discovered in his room, Al swings into gear even though no one else accepts her bona fides—not the other patients, not Debbie McClure or any of the other nurses and staffers, and certainly not DC Steve Seddon or any of the other officers tasked with investigating. Al must launch an investigation on her own even as she’s confined to the ward, doped with medications, and treated to the opposite of cooperation from the officials.
A great premise generates some powerful episodes. Only the identification of the culprit is a letdown.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5870-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
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