As efficiently engineered as a toy train, though the franchise regulars have precious little to do.
A nothingburger tussle between two women at a Palm Springs birthday party lands one of them in hot water when she’s suspected of killing the other and dumping her body in lukewarm water.
The victim, wannabe actress Katy Lane, hadn’t even been invited to Hollywood legend Damian Leon’s 70th birthday party. She only showed up in the eternal hope of attracting the attention of some movers and shakers. And she’s spotted early on by Ronan Davis, the ex-boyfriend who, as Damian’s personal assistant, has been in charge of party arrangements. But Ronan softens and lets her stay, leaving Katy free to push Ronan’s friend Emma Perez, head engineer at Richards Renewable Energy, into Damian’s pool (all right, the two women end up in the pool together). The next day, Katy is found floating in the pool, the victim of a lethal dose of knockout drugs administered offsite by an agent of Belarusian general-turned-oligarch Victor Popov, who’s been sniffing around RRE looking for a way to buy into renewable energy tech at way under market value—without alerting any potential witnesses like Katy. Popov has already leaned heavily on Martin Lundstrom, a second-rate RRE engineer who’s so convinced that he should’ve gotten Emma’s job that he’s more than happy to hurt her. And Capt. Warner Wilson, the publicity-hungry cop in charge of the investigation, dreams of headlines that would link him to A-list Hollywood figures invited to Damian’s birthday party, a beautiful corpse, and a slam-dunk conviction if only he can dig up evidence against Emma. Luckily, Billy Barnett, formerly Teddy Fay of the CIA, is on hand to throw one more monkey wrench into all these not very well-laid plans.
As efficiently engineered as a toy train, though the franchise regulars have precious little to do.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593854747
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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