A stirring mystery anchored by a realistic and compelling protagonist.
A woman returning to her hometown finds herself embroiled in a mystery that jeopardizes her life in Greyson’s novel.
Kate Gardner has had a rough time of it lately. After a visit to her hometown that dredges up memories of her long-dead sister, her husband, Scott, has an affair with his high school sweetheart and abandons Kate and their two kids. Having put her own promising career in marketing on hold to help Scott pursue a law career, Kate finds herself adrift and anxious, with a peculiar feeling that someone is following her. Her paranoia seems justified when she sees a video that reveals that a mysterious stranger was stalking her at her son’s soccer game. From there, Greyson’s pacing picks up and events escalate; a random man shows up unannounced to Kate’s home and then claims that he just knocked on the wrong door, and later, someone carves a sexist expletive on the side of her minivan. Soon, the stalking becomes more brazen, including lewd messages on her phone. Aided by Ryan Daley, a police detective to whom she quickly finds herself attracted, Kate tries hard to maintain her composure; she finds herself forgetting appointments and family activities, leading another cop to suspect that her stories of her pursuer are unreliable. Over the course of this tightly plotted tale, Greyson consistently keeps readers on their toes with false leads and surprises. All the while, Greyson paints Kate as a deeply sympathetic character dealing with anxiety and depression as she works temp jobs to provide for her children; meanwhile, her ex-husband and his vindictive new girlfriend attempt to cast greater doubt on her stability. Along the way, the author also works to highlight the moralizing behavior of Kate’s suburban small town. It all leads to an unexpected finale that feels earned.
A stirring mystery anchored by a realistic and compelling protagonist.Pub Date: June 16, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Greyson Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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