Ambitious, absorbing, and deeply satisfying.
Boady Sanden, former director of the Innocence Project, is persuaded to reopen a case that was closed four years ago. And the clock is ticking.
Ruth Matthews is convinced both that her brother, Elijah, is a prophet who talks with God and that he didn’t kill Jalen Bale, the pastor bashed to death while Elijah was a janitor at the Church of the New Hope, even though he's been locked in a mental hospital since having been found not guilty by reason of insanity. The evidence against Elijah was overwhelming, but the real reason Boady doesn’t want the job is that Elijah’s attorney was Ben Pruitt, Boady’s law partner and best friend, who killed his wife, nearly got away with it, and then, when Boady confronted him with proof of his guilt, committed suicide by cop in Boady’s study as his partner looked on. The good news is that Boady almost immediately starts to find holes in the case against Elijah, who’s more interested in oracular prophecies than answering simple questions. The bad news is that Emma Pruitt, the daughter Boady and his wife, Dee, took in as a ward four years ago without telling her how her father died, has been turned against them by her wealthy, rapacious aunt, Anna Adler, who’s filed papers to replace their guardianship of Emma with her own. Now Boady has two impossible tasks—vindicating Elijah before the hearing that will permit his doctor to scramble his brain with electroconvulsive therapy and persuading Emma to return to his family—and that second one cuts agonizingly close to the bone. Somehow he manages to collect more and more information that exonerates Elijah and throws suspicion elsewhere. But will he be able to rise above his own bias for seeing every conflict in legal terms and convince Emma that he loves her like a father?
Ambitious, absorbing, and deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780316566353
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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