Forget about the MacGuffin that knits these threads together and enjoy Atkins’ biggest, boldest thrill ride yet.
What begins as another of Atkins’ trademark regional crime tales blossoms into a story of international intrigue without ever abandoning its base.
Addison McKellar’s husband, Dean, has gone AWOL once before, returning home after five days with no explanation to speak of. So she doesn’t get seriously alarmed till he’s been gone a whole week. What tips the balance this time isn’t the extra two days, but her visit to the Cotton Exchange Building: The news that McKellar Construction hasn’t had an office there for at least two years sends Addison first to the Memphis police, who don’t believe that Dean is missing, and then to Porter Hayes, “the Black Sherlock Holmes,” who does. As the question of what Dean’s up to morphs into the question of who Dean really is, Atkins skillfully draws in more players who seem summoned from different worlds. Joanna Grayson, who co-starred with Elvis Presley in a movie half a century ago, is still working the connection to attract fans of the King. Her client Leslie Grimes is the billionaire owner of a chain of Christian gift shops. One-armed Jack Dumas is an arms dealer whose partner, Peter Collinson, has vanished with a bulging wallet. Omar, a sketchy Turkish dealer, has been killed in a shopping mall’s security warren. Then, shortly after he’s reported dead, Dean McKellar returns to his hearth and home, and things become much, much worse. He won’t answer Addison’s simplest questions; he casts doubt on everything she says; he goes out of his way to embarrass her in front of their friends; and he ends up turning their children, along with virtually everyone else in her life, against her.
Forget about the MacGuffin that knits these threads together and enjoy Atkins’ biggest, boldest thrill ride yet.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780063293380
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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