An exciting and fast-paced time-travel fantasy starring an action odd couple.
A tough guy and a genius embark on a dimension-hopping adventure.
As Salter’s novel opens, all seems peaceful enough. A cheerful group—Breslin “Brex” Herndon, the smartest science nerd in the world; Jack “Jacks” Rigalto, his friend and former bodyguard; and Sara, Jacks’ 6-year-old daughter—is enjoying a day in Manhattan’s Battery Park when a mysterious portal, a schimmerplotz, opens in thin air. Brex and Sara are spiritually drawn to it. By the time the quick connection is broken and Jacks’ friend and daughter are restored to him, they know quite a bit about the portal—and the dystopian world on the other side of it. The two experienced the horror of this grim realm and the dark villainy of a general named Bnindagun, and, unfortunately for them, he’s aware of them in turn. Brex and Jacks are employees of the newly created Cosmic Intelligence Group. Much to Brex’s confusion, his bosses don’t seem interested in following up on what looks like Bnindagun’s elaborate plan to range over different dimensions and diverse time periods. This throws the burden of an investigation squarely on the wisecracking but effective team of Brex and Jacks in a fast-paced plot that reaches out to include Sara; Jacks’ wife, Momma Sara; and her identical twin sister, Tara. Salter adopts a breezy, friendly tone throughout. Even during the story’s frequent and well-managed action sequences and when the plot’s developments are sinister and foreboding, the author maintains a bouncy repartee between his unlikely pair of heroes, always contrasting Brex’s arch intellectual snobbery with Jacks’ rugged directness. As the first volume of an action-adventure series, the book is winningly inviting. The two heroes go from one mishap to another in Bnindagun’s alternate timeline, always with Brex supplying the exposition and Jacks delivering the snappy comebacks. Readers will be eager for more.
An exciting and fast-paced time-travel fantasy starring an action odd couple.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-58-604581-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Dingbat Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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