by A.L. Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A work with a strong, likable protagonist and a plot that will keep readers guessing.
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Smith offers a whodunit and courtroom drama in which a defense lawyer takes the case of a woman accused of killing a sports agent.
Alexandra Phillips-Bell is an award-winning attorney who’s famous for defending women in devastating circumstances. Her newest client is former cheerleader Angel Montgomery, the wife of Chandler Montgomery, chief of obstetrics at a university hospital in Dallas. When Kasey James, a high-profile sports agent, is found dead in an airport parking facility, all signs point to Angel, with whom he had a brief but torrid affair. The key piece of evidence is an email in which Kasey confronts Angel with unspeakable allegations—that he and her husband were lovers, and that Kasey knowingly exposed Angel to HIV as revenge for stealing Chandler from him. But all is not as it seems, and Alex untangles an increasingly complicated web that involves mental illness, subterfuge, and the orchestrated targeting of Chandler’s family. As she works to prove Angel’s innocence, she exposes another kind of injustice underlying the legal proceedings and agrees to represent another client. Smith weaves a complex and unpredictable story that will captivate fans of detective novels and legal procedurals. Some events in the story are driven by pure coincidence, such as Angel and Kasey happening to share the same therapist, but the author deftly distracts from moments of implausibility with humor. The story’s forensic, medical, and legal details are well researched and satisfying, and it unflinchingly addresses timely social issues, such as systemic poverty, while never allowing the pace to slacken. Overall, Smith delivers a gripping novel that will leave many readers demanding a sequel.
A work with a strong, likable protagonist and a plot that will keep readers guessing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by A.L. Smith
by Joanna Wallace ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 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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by Megan Miranda ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 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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