A fast-paced and tightly executed tale of a superpowered corporate spy.
Finch offers a tech thriller featuring corporate espionage, psychic intrigue, and brutal betrayal.
Brothers Drew and Alex Hemsley are CEO and CTO, respectively, of a New York City–based tech-security startup called Sentry Data Security. Alex is a “puller”—a psychic who can experience the entirety of people’s memories at once, just by touching them. He used his gift to help a small-town police department pursue a case involving kidnapped children, which resulted in him reading the mind of a murderer. The trauma of “pulling” from such a monster was too much for Alex (“It surrounded me, swallowed me, threatened to drag me to hell”), and the memories still haunt him years later; he swore off using his powers and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Drew eventually coaxed him back to the outside world with the CTO position. When Sentry becomes the latest victim of a series of data leaks at cybersecurity companies across New York, Alex must find the source; to do so, he teams up with an industry rival, fellow CTO Jessie Pexler of Pexler Technologies. Alex and Jessie develop an exciting romantic chemistry, which is complicated when Alex receives an anonymous flash drive containing leaked files from Pexler Technologies. A kidnapping and murder tear the pair apart, and soon, both Drew and Pexler Technologies CEO Gideon Pexler receive ransom demands. The situation forces Alex to use his powers once again to get to the bottom of the mysterious leaks and heinous crimes. Finch delivers an incredibly entertaining read that refreshingly avoids frequent pitfalls of the SF-thriller genre. Specifically, the author develops a straightforward SF premise over the course of the novel, which she never complicates more than she needs to. This is one of the narrative’s greatest strengths, as this simplicity allows her to focus on developing rich, engaging characters and a thrilling plot that’s easy to follow, even as the narrative maintains a brisk pace.
A fast-paced and tightly executed tale of a superpowered corporate spy.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798994957608
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Little Bird Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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