A pleasant and well-executed crime drama.
A lawyer—defending a client accused of murder—gets drawn into a murky conspiracy that involves the mob, Russian corruption, and a lucrative business deal in this fourth installment of a series.
When Peter Roosevelt is shot dead in his Hawaii home, the obvious suspect is Wayson Takei, a successful businessman infamous for his “world-class temper.” Peter was sleeping with Wayson’s wife, Lei, who had just left her husband and filed for divorce, a humiliation that provoked wounded pride more than jealousy in the entrepreneur. Furthermore, the gun used to kill Peter belongs to Wayson, the last contribution to a pile of evidence that lands him in jail, held on a prohibitive $2 million bail. Pancho McMartin, a private attorney and the star of this series, takes on Wayson as a client and quickly discovers another possibility: that Peter’s murder had something to do with a business deal he effectively thwarted, a multimillion-dollar development project he opposed on environmental grounds. Peter’s neighbor Barry Williamson was among the principal architects of the deal and stood to lose everything. Even more suspicious is the involvement of Las Vegas businessman Joe Malen, a “shady character” with ties to organized crime who may have once been a Russian oligarch. Robinson packs the novel’s plot with a generous measure of action, and the tale maintains an enjoyably brisk pace. This is a legal thriller with an intriguing political dimension—ultimately the Russian element of the story ties into a corrupt American governor—but it avoids any pretensions to literary greatness or even nuance. The author’s goal seems to be the production of easily digestible entertainment and some artfully crafted suspense, both of which are ably provided.
A pleasant and well-executed crime drama.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948749-67-1
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Terra Nova Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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