A slow-burning tale of vigilante justice leading to a satisfying ending that relies equally on convenient coincidence and...
The creator of sleuthing farmer Virgil Cain (Shoot the Dog, 2013, etc.) launches a new series that tosses a hard-used rape victim and her father into a sea of civic corruption in small-town Ontario.
Kate Burns won’t be the only person taking the stand against Joseph Sanderson III, who served as mayor of Rose City for so long that he’s still called The Mayor. Prosecutor Thomas Grant plans to call Maria Secord, Debra Williams, and Amanda Long to tell how The Mayor raped them when they were teenagers, half a lifetime ago. But Miles Browning, the defendant’s lawyer, earns his million-dollar fee by making mincemeat of the other complainants, and when Kate has her day in court, it’s not her best day either. The Mayor walks, leaving his victims with no redress. Kate can’t even accept the comfort of her family; her mother, Suzy, died of an overdose years ago, and she was estranged from her father even before that. It doesn’t help Kate that Carl Burns has returned to town after a stretch in prison for setting a fire that claimed a man’s life. Carl’s not the type to beg for his daughter’s forgiveness. But he is the type to lend a hand to Suzy’s sister, Frances Rourke, an organic farmer who’s battling a factory-farm importer and a toxic landfill proposed by city councilor Bud Stephens and Hank Hofferman, the pig farmer whose half-built barn Carl had torched. Wouldn’t it be nice if The Mayor had a hand in this latest round of skullduggery as well so that father and daughter could fight common enemies and not each other?
A slow-burning tale of vigilante justice leading to a satisfying ending that relies equally on convenient coincidence and the audience’s wishes.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8560-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Twisty and propulsive.
A first date takes a sinister turn for a troubled young woman in Walker’s third psychological thriller.
It’s the day after Laura Lochner’s date with a man she met online, and she hasn’t returned to the Connecticut home of her sister, Rosie, her brother-in-law, Joe, and their little boy, Mason, where she’s been staying after a bad breakup. Rosie fears the worst, but Joe advises caution. After all, Laura is an adult and can have some fun, right? But Rosie has a bad feeling. Laura won’t answer her phone, and Rosie only has more questions after poking around online for info on Laura’s date, Jonathan Fields. Rosie eventually calls the police, and events begin to cascade like dominoes. Interspersed with Rosie’s attempt to trace Laura’s movements and get a handle on the guy she went out with is Laura’s first-person account of the actual date as well as enlightening snippets of sessions between Laura and her therapist. Laura’s is the most compelling part—a tormented, often prickly piece of storytelling by a woman carrying the pain of a horrible event that happened in high school and feelings of abandonment by a father who always seemed to love Rosie more. Laura’s desire to be loved is all-consuming, but her conviction that she is not worthy of love is heartbreaking. She sees subterfuge in nearly everything Jonathan says and does. Meanwhile, Rosie must come to terms with some ugly surprises of her own as she digs into their past. As the timelines inevitably converge, Walker’s clever misdirection paves the way to a truly chilling finale, and she has plenty of insightful things to say about the blame placed on women by society and themselves for the idiotic, careless, and sometimes downright evil things men do.
Twisty and propulsive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19867-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.
A young newlywed's life is upended, and a picturesque neighborhood is shattered, when she is suspected of a savage murder.
At the beginning of a new year, Joey Mullen moves back to England from Ibiza with Alfie, her husband, whom she hastily married out of grief over the death of her mother. Jack, Joey’s older brother, invites the young couple to move into his painted Victorian house in the upscale Bristol neighborhood of Melville Heights so they can get on their feet financially and help with the baby that Jack and his wife, Rebecca, are expecting. Joey quickly becomes infatuated with their neighbor Tom Fitzwilliam, a new headmaster charged with improving the local school. Her crush only intensifies when Alfie suggests having a baby, and Joey begins to suspect her marriage was a mistake. Meanwhile, Tom’s wife, Nicola, struggles to fill her days and remains oblivious to their son, Freddie, who regularly spies on his neighbors and the village's teenage schoolgirls, taking their photos and keeping a detailed log of everyone's activities. This surveillance exacerbates the paranoia and mental illness of another neighbor, the mother of 16-year-old Jenna, one of Tom’s students. Jenna’s mother is convinced that she knows the Fitzwilliam family from a vacation incident years earlier (and that the family is now stalking her), but Jenna is more concerned that Tom may be having an inappropriate relationship with her best friend. After several months, tension in the neighborhood explodes, and Joey is suspected of a brutal murder. However, as the police gather evidence, it becomes clear how many secrets each family has been hiding. Jewell (Then She Was Gone, 2017, etc.) adeptly weaves together a complex array of characters in her latest thriller. The novel opens with the murder investigation and deftly maintains its intensity and brisk pace even as the story moves through different moments in time over the previous three months. Jewell’s use of third-person narration allows her to explore each family’s anxieties and sorrows, which ultimately makes this novel’s ending all the more unsettling.
An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9007-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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