A darkly glittering gem of a thriller from a new writer to watch.
While scuba diving in Bora Bora, honeymooners Erin and Mark find something in the water that will test their marriage and imperil their very lives.
Simply begging to be filmed, British actress Steadman’s debut novel has already been optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures. With unreliable characters, wry voices, exquisite pacing, and a twisting plot, Steadman potently draws upon her acting chops. Opening with Erin digging her husband’s grave, the novel descends abruptly—how did the honeymoon end so disastrously? The timeline backs up to set Erin and Mark’s roller coaster in motion. A documentary filmmaker, Erin has been working on a project exploring how prisoners envision their lives upon release. She has focused on three inmates: Alexa, an engaging 42-year-old incarcerated for helping her mother die; Holli, a sullen young woman imprisoned for setting a bus on fire during a riot; and Eddie, a charmingly dangerous local mob kingpin doing time for money laundering. While Erin presses on with her film, Mark, an investment banker, has lost his job, and prospects for a new one are dim. Although they've economized on their wedding, the honeymoon is meant to be a final splurge. What they find in the water, however, skews their moral compasses. Caught in a game they do not understand, Erin and Mark are swiftly beset by ominous Russian figures, mysterious text messages, and shadowy stalkers. Meanwhile, Holli has been released and disappears with her boyfriend, who appears to be associated with Islamic extremists in Syria. DCI Andy Foster, a Special Operative for Counterterrorism, questions how much Erin knew about Holli’s post-prison plans. So Erin can add Interpol to the list of people surveilling her every move. As events tangle further, Erin and Mark careen to the edges of international espionage and domestic disaster.
A darkly glittering gem of a thriller from a new writer to watch.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9718-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Rated B for badass.
A professional torturer on the run from her employers falls in with sexy twin brothers.
You probably know Meyer as the then-27-year-old Mormon housewife who woke up from a dream about vampires and gave the world Twilight, though in addition to that series she has already published one adult thriller (The Host, 2008). In her latest, she marries the genres of spy versus spy and throbbing romance novel with good results. Meet Juliana, or Alex, or Casey, or Chris—whatever her alias of the moment is, she’s an operative with a medical school background who specializes in chemically controlled torture and interrogation. Somewhere along the line, she learned too much about the secrets of her employers, and she now lives in a state of high-tech paranoia, sleeping in a bathtub wearing a gas mask in a secret location booby-trapped at every possible ingress. When her old boss calls her in for one last mission, she’s not sure she isn’t being double-crossed—but nonetheless proceeds with the kidnapping of Washington, D.C., schoolteacher Daniel Beach, who's purportedly part of a vile plot to release a virus that will wreak global doom. In fact, he is a man whose deep inner goodness is rivaled only by his scorching outer hotness—but our socially awkward virgin heroine won’t realize this until after she’s taken him to her secret lair, stripped him naked, strapped him to a table, and injected him with compounds that produce pure agony for 10 minutes at a time. The biochemical magic between them is even more powerful than the nasty drugs, and by the time his identical twin brother, a swashbuckling black-ops type, shows up to kill her and rescue him, love has bloomed in the torture chamber. As they begin to see through the layers of cross and double cross, the two agents decide to join forces and go into hiding together, with the brother of course, on a ranch in Texas with a pack of trained superdogs. A tale of skulduggery, bodice rippery, and shoot-'em-up action unfolds, complete with help from a luscious mistress of disguise who could have stepped right out of a James Bond novel.
Rated B for badass.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38783-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when...
A New Hampshire cop tries to piece together a mysterious woman’s life following a car accident and discovers nothing is as it seems.
Gardner (Fear Nothing, 2014, etc.) puts Sgt. Wyatt Foster front and center in this overly complicated thriller, while corporate security expert—and Foster’s new girlfriend—Tessa Leoni, from the 2011 Love You More, plays a distant second fiddle. When Foster is called to a single-car accident on a rural road, it seems like driver Nicole Frank simply drank too much Scotch and drove off the road. But Nicole, who miraculously survives the crash, insists that her daughter, Vero, is still missing. Foster and his team launch a massive search until Nicole’s husband, Thomas, arrives at the hospital and tells the police that there is no child: Nicole suffered a traumatic brain injury (actually several), causing her to conjure an imaginary daughter. As the details of Nicole’s original injury—she suspiciously fell down both her basement and front stairs within the span of a few months—emerge, Foster and the reader become more, rather than less, confused. Nicole’s history unspools in calculated sound bites, with each episode ending in an artificial cliffhanger. According to Nicole—who claims to be “the woman who died twice”—she escaped a horrific childhood in a brothel known as the Dollhouse, a place that’s the nexus of the mystery surrounding Vero, who may or may not be a figment of her addled brain.
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when it finally comes, doesn’t answer all the plot’s unnecessary questions.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95456-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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