A solid but unexceptional mystery/thriller with high stakes and nonstop action throughout.
The second installment of Stoler’s mystery series featuring Nick Donahue pits the professional gambler against jihadists bent on world domination.
When Marina DiPietro—a former MI6 operative who owns an investigation firm based in London—accepts a new client who happens to be one of the richest men in the world, she and her partner (in love and espionage), Nick Donahue, come to learn that their assignment is much more complicated and dangerous than it initially appeared. The client, Adnan bin Haddad, owns a stable of racehorses, one of which is scheduled to run in the upcoming Kentucky Derby in just a few weeks’ time. But someone has threatened to maim all of his horses—including the pride of bin Haddad’s stable, Devil Wind—if he doesn’t cough up $100 million. As DiPietro and Donahue begin investigating, they discover that their billionaire client may be withholding information and soon uncover troubling connections between bin Haddad’s many businesses and radicalized Islamist terrorists targeting groundbreaking technology being developed at one of his companies that, if used by unscrupulous individuals, could affect every country on the planet. Complicating matters is a New York City mobster who wants to even an old score with Donahue and his partner. The novel has plenty for suspense fans to sink their teeth into, including relentless pacing, globe-hopping adventure, and a knotty storyline. Stoler’s flair for describing the various locales is an undeniable strength: Churchill Downs, on the day of the Kentucky Derby, was “a madhouse…a riot of color, of wall-to-wall people, over one hundred thousand strong. Champagne, mint juleps, and Bourbon were flowing.” The characters, unfortunately, are a bit two-dimensional; readers don’t know Donahue and DiPietro any better by novel’s end, and the secondary characters, particularly the villains, are cardboard stereotypes.
A solid but unexceptional mystery/thriller with high stakes and nonstop action throughout.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 9781644371930
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
