A slow-burn mystery held together by an admirable cast of strong, flawed women.
A young woman returns as police chief of her hometown in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens only to find herself challenged by a local drug ring and a haunting cold case.
Chief Callie Hauser has been back in Pine Lakes only a few months when she has to arrest her mother for drunk driving. Jenna’s struggles with addiction shaped much of Callie’s childhood, but she never knew their root. Now she finds out that when Jenna was 16, she discovered a dead baby in the woods. Investigating the Baby Doe case leads Callie to a long-missing teenager, Sabrina Riley, but overall, her attention is occupied by more recent concerns: an uptick in the number of drug overdoses in town; her friend Jane’s slow recovery from a recent hit-and-run; and the fact that Jenna goes missing after being released from jail. Stretched to the breaking point, Callie finds some solace in Adrian, a cute scientist she meets by the river, but she can’t help worrying that the old case and new case are connected—particularly when she discovers that she and Baby Doe share DNA. Mullen plays a bit with perspective and time, choosing to narrate some chapters from another character’s point of view as well as to experiment with second-person narration, but this is truly Callie’s story. Mullen doesn’t shy away from exploring the echoes of trauma within families and communities, and the way some stories are ignored or silenced, but Callie’s strength and moral compass ground the darker aspects of the novel. Like so many modern thrillers, this is a tale about the things men do that hurt women, both casually and with vicious intent, but through Callie, Mullen also offers hope that by standing alongside one another, women not only survive, but preserve the stories of those they have lost.
A slow-burn mystery held together by an admirable cast of strong, flawed women.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781250400574
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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