A devious, if occasionally melodramatic, psychological thriller.
A disturbed man searches for his missing girlfriend in Baker’s Jekyll-and-Hyde–inspired debut crime novel.
Peter Longer, the son of an abusive preacher, has another personality inside him—one he calls Jason, who tells him to do bad things—and he believes the alter ego to be a result of a family curse. The 49-year-old man also believes that he’ll die at 50, the same age that his father did; a spirit woman known as the Wren, he thinks, will come to punish him for the things he’s done. He was committed to a state institution as a teenager after killing a woman, but he managed to escape and was accepted, under a false name, to Columbia University. Later, he pursued a series of blue-collar jobs out West. Eventually, in Colorado, he strolled into a church on a snowy morning, looking for warmth, and met Sarah Montrose, a friendly young woman with a trust fund. The two fell in love and Peter found himself with a luxury apartment, a job polishing resumes, and a good woman in his life. He was convinced, in fact, that Sarah cured him of his family curse. Then, after two years of happiness, Sarah disappeared in 2016. The cops got involved, but the case quickly went cold, leaving only Peter and Richard Redd, a lone Denver police detective, committed to finding her two years later: “I continued to search for Sarah,” Peter narrates. “For without her, I was doomed. She had protected me from the cruelty, the savagery the bloodline bred into the men who carried the seed.” When Redd comes across a name related to a different murder—someone named Jason Bane—it becomes clear that the story that Peter has been telling himself may not be as straightforward as it seems.
Baker’s prose is taut and plainspoken, with shades of dirty realism that go along with the novel’s general sense of psychological unease. Here, for example, Peter stops at a drug store to tend some wounds before going to meet a single mother whom he thinks might be a suitable replacement for Sarah: “In the rearview mirror, I saw my lip had broken open again….I stopped for gauze, antiseptics, and Band-Aids. A fuzzy pink bunny sat on display at the checkout counter. Perfect for the first gift to a little girl who I hoped would grow to adore me.” The novel is mostly narrated from Peter’s perspective, although the introduction of Redd offers some much-needed respite from the protagonist’s unsettling point of view. The book has a sensationalized view of violence, rural poverty, and mental illness, and readers will be likely to spot the plot’s big twist from miles away. Even so, the mystery that unfolds over the course of the novel is somewhat more nuanced than it initially appears, resulting in a reading experience that’s chock full of reversals and complications. The faint of heart should probably stay away, but fans of dark, cerebral horror tales will likely enjoy unraveling this one.
A devious, if occasionally melodramatic, psychological thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73412-982-3
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Horsetooth Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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