A gleefully dubious cast headlines this grim, involving crime story.
An ex-con returns to his old criminal ways to save his daughter in Wilsher’s thriller.
Houston medical resident Bebe Moore is in over her head. She’s been making and selling methylamine to a biker gang, which has attracted the interest of a rival cartel. When thugs abduct her girlfriend, Amy, Bebe calls in Amy’s father, Charlie McCoy, who did a six-year stint behind bars for robbery. He’s now in a witness protection program in Colorado after testifying against the mob; he sneaks into Texas to attempt to rescue the daughter he’s hardly seen through the years of his incarceration and time in WITSEC. Finding Amy isn’t easy, but crooked lawyer Daniel Spector is willing to help, so long as skilled lock-picker Charlie takes part in a bank heist—it’s the cartel’s bank, and sure to be stacked with millions. While Spector puts together a ragtag crew that’s not especially trustworthy, Charlie risks his life and his freedom to swipe a bundle from dangerous, well-armed gangsters. Wilsher delivers an enjoyable, swiftly paced tale; the characters are delightfully complex, from Bebe, whose feelings for Amy are hard to nail down (Bebe “doesn’t understand love, and she’ll freely admit that”), to some oafish brothers on the heist team who may not be as dense as they seem. They’re all unpredictable, likely to engineer a double-cross or two and driven by a variety of motives (money, revenge, or ensuring Amy’s safety). During the steady buildup to the heist, an imminent hurricane sets an ominous mood, reinforcing the glaring lack of trust among the crew, and portends the arrival of wrathful cartel members, vicious bikers, and a crooked cop. The latter half of the narrative rarely slows down as myriad people chase each other across Texas’ arid landscape. This exceedingly dark novel racks up a significant body count before it reaches its unforgettable ending.
A gleefully dubious cast headlines this grim, involving crime story.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798218955427
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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