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
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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