Classic domestic-thriller elements—the too-perfect couple, the unreliable narrator, the troubled past—are given a good...
A woman who suffered extreme trauma in her teen years learns that her celebrity husband may be a sexual predator.
Jason Powell is hot in every way. The handsome NYU professor has written a book on socially conscious investing called Equalonomics that spent nearly two years on the bestseller list. Now, in addition to his university job, he has a mega-successful consulting firm and a top-rated podcast. “I never would have predicted that my cute little egghead would become a cultural and political icon,” says his wife, Angela, the narrator, who met her man during a catering gig she was working out on Long Island. Now she and Jason occupy a carriage house worth millions in Greenwich Village and send their precocious son to a pricey private school; she has the life of her dreams. Then comes the fly in the ointment, an intern named Rachel who files a complaint at the NYPD Special Victims Unit claiming that Jason made inappropriate sexual suggestions at the office. A second line of narration follows Detective Corinne Duncan as she investigates the complaint, which blows up a few days later when a second woman comes forward with a much more serious accusation. As the story explodes in the media and on the internet, Angela’s reaction is a bit different than one might expect: “How long could Jason’s 'scandal' make the rounds before someone started to wonder why his wife kept such a low profile?” Why, indeed. Angela’s unusual and horrible secret will not completely unfold until the very end of this page-turner. Burke (The Ex, 2016, etc.) puts her experience as prosecutor to good use in her 13th novel, with detailed police work and legal machinations playing key roles.
Classic domestic-thriller elements—the too-perfect couple, the unreliable narrator, the troubled past—are given a good workout in this satisfying round of “Who’s the Psycho?”Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-239051-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe’s three cases to date still don’t inhibit Box’s gift for nonstop...
The latest in an award-winning series set in the Bighorn Mountains (Savage Run, 2002, etc.).
Minutes after Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett arrests Lamar Gardiner, District Supervisor for the Twelve Sleep National Forest, for firing into a herd of elk, killing seven animals and blindly continuing to reload with cigarettes after he runs out of shells, Gardiner manages to handcuff Joe to his steering wheel and bolt off into a winter storm, only to turn up pinned to a tree with a pair of arrows, his throat cut. And things get even messier from that point on. The attack on a federal agent, together with reports that the Nation of the Rocky Mountain Sovereign Citizens has established an encampment in Twelve Sleep, brings gung-ho US Forest Service investigator Melinda Strickland and FBI sharpshooter Dick Munker, a veteran of Waco and Ruby Ridge, to town. Strickland maintains that she’s just trying to get justice for a murdered official, but she seems awfully eager to tie the perp to the Sovereigns. By the time Joe arrests one of Gardiner’s disappointing killers and identifies the other, Strickland and Munker are already planning an all-out attack on the encampment. The prospect is a personal nightmare for Joe, since Jeannie Keeley, the drifter whose abandoned daughter April Joe and his wife have been trying to adopt, has reclaimed April and spirited her off to the dubious shelter of the Sovereigns.
The loose ends that make this the least satisfactory of Joe’s three cases to date still don’t inhibit Box’s gift for nonstop action and his ability to see every side of the most divisive issues in the West.Pub Date: May 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15045-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
The book is pure fun, although slender. Another volume of Maud’s misdeeds would be most welcome.
Five connected stories about a murderous old Swedish lady.
Maud has a good thing going. At age 88, she’s lived in a large apartment rent-free for 70 years because of a clause in an old contract. Never married, she loves to travel alone and to be alone. In the first story, "An Elderly Lady Has Accommodation Problems," a rare event happens: Her doorbell rings. Jasmin Schimmerhof, a 40-year-old avant-garde artist who lives in the building, stops by to say hello. The daughter of celebrities, her past includes drugs, multiple divorces, and tragedy. Her current art project strives to “unmask the domineering tactics of the patriarchy,” meaning that her small apartment is filled with phalluses—some even hanging from the ceiling. She is delightfully overbearing as she constantly tries to weasel her way into Maud’s good graces. But Maud isn’t stupid or senile, and she knows Jasmin is up to something. Once Maud figures out what it is, her solution is drastic, funny, and final. Maud is a seasoned world traveler who once, at age 18, had been engaged to Lt. Gustaf Adelsiöö. He’d emphatically broken off their engagement on learning her family wasn’t rich. Now, in “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels,” she reads in the newspaper that he is a wealthy 90-year-old widower about to marry the 55-year-old Zazza, whom ex-teacher Maud knows as her long-ago student, a schemer and a failed soft-core porn actress. When Maud arranges to get near her at a spa and then overhears Zazza’s plans to take control of Gustaf’s estate, Maud devises an emphatic countermeasure. And then in “An Elderly Lady Seeks Peace at Christmastime,” she deals with “The Problem” in the apartment above her. Maud’s murders always have plausible motives, and she is a sympathetic character as long as one keeps a safe distance. Each story takes its sweet time to develop and concludes with a juicy dose of senior justice.
The book is pure fun, although slender. Another volume of Maud’s misdeeds would be most welcome.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64129-011-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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