An engaging dark comedy rife with retribution.
McCormick offers a blood-soaked tale of upward mobility.
At the gory heart of this work is the mastermind known as Splice, whose criminal father and drug-addicted mother dump him on the side of an Iowa road as a teenager with nothing but a $50 bill. The precocious teen soon gets a library card, which enables him to learn new skills, including computer proficiency and pickpocketing. These abilities allow him to make a dishonest living, first in Omaha, then Chicago and New York City. But his life changes when he’s caught hacking into an ATM owned by an old man who’s high up in a major crime organization. Fortunately, the man takes a liking to him and even gives the boy, unnamed to this point, a new identity: Robert. The teen becomes the man’s constant companion but then decides to join the Marines, hoping to be able to access a military supercomputer. Robert befriends a mentally ill Marine named Catherine “Cat” Honig,and, in time, they form a secret commando squad that handles missions for a criminal syndicate. Despite painful missteps along the way, he accomplishes a high-tech dream and renames himself Splice. In this volume, McCormick ably creates likable action heroes out of people who don’t fit into society. Robert/Splice uses his intellect throughout in order to flourish, and his appealing ability to correctly predict people’s behavior allows him to survive his occasional lapses in judgment—even if what happens to him seems rather unlikely. Overall, readers will want him and Cat to come out on top after the setbacks that fate has handed them. Indeed, one finds it easier to appreciate the criminals’ motivations than those of the supposed forces of good, whom McCormick portrays as elected and military officials who are more concerned with appearances than with doing the right thing.
An engaging dark comedy rife with retribution.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-952880-00-1
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Azoth Khem Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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