A woman gets in touch with her inner action hero in this bracing thriller.
In this novel, a restaurateur’s ex-husband—a journalist working on an explosive story—puts her and her son in danger.
Callie James is the owner of Le Cochon Bronze, a popular eatery in Seattle, where she returned, heartbroken and pregnant, after she caught her French spouse cheating on her. Fourteen years later, her former husband shows up at the restaurant. He is a renowned investigative reporter working on “the story of the modern terrorist world.” She wants no part of him and escorts him outside. No sooner does he inform her that someone is trying to kill him and he needs her help than a hit-and-run driver propels him through the front of her restaurant. He survives, and, against her better judgment, she agrees to hide him for the sake of the son he has never met. “This kind of risk-taking is not like you,” her sommelier notes. Her 13-year-old son, Lew, tells her: “You need someone to help you. Someone tough.” Callie knows just the guy: Cash Logan, “a scoundrel,” womanizer, and smuggler whom she turned over to the police two years ago. (“When you get out of jail, don’t ever come back here,” she told him.) While it is out of character for him, too, he agrees to help her (albeit for a sizable sum of money). One of the pleasures of this fast-paced franchise starter is Callie’s believably gradual transformation into someone who would spray bear mace on two assassins in a car. She is, as described, “a force of nature.” Weissbourd’s supporting cast of colorful characters just skirts the realm of clichés. In this entertaining tale, it is menacingly effective that the softer a villain’s voice gets, the angrier he is. Only the ex-husband is not as convincingly drawn. Still, as one character toasts, “Bravo, Callie James.”
A woman gets in touch with her inner action hero in this bracing thriller.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 9781733438209
Page Count: -
Publisher: Blue City Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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