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
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
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