Mom knows best when a daughter takes up with a guy who's wrong, wrong, wrong. Not that Kevin Glade doesn't try to make a good impression. A Cornell scholarship student who sends Laurie Lewishon poems and jewelry, he's polite and presentable to a fault; even his room is neat. Now if only he were Jewish—and if only he weren't really an impostor named Billy Owens, on the run from Kokomo, Indiana, where he killed the high-school sweetheart who thought he was getting a little too possessive. Billy did such a good job covering up his murder of April Meadows that even her parents, though they suspect she didn't just run away from home, are a million miles from suspecting him. But Laurie's shrewd mother and grandmother know from the get-go that there's something funny about relentlessly ingratiating Kevin. Jessica is determined to unmask him; but for every step she takes—uncovering holes in the biography he's sold Laurie, revealing the unhealthy intensity of his attachment to her, linking him to a conveniently dead drug user, even exposing his poems as plagiarisms—there's some plausible explanation. Meanwhile, back in Indiana, the savvy Inspector Sandy Ungar gets a hunch that the departed Billy killed April Meadows—but she runs into the same discouraging pattern of soothing explanations at every turn. How long will it be before these two worrywarts finally run into each other—and what will Kevin be doing with Laurie by the time they do? That's the one and only question Jacobs (There Was a Little Boy, 1990) has on her mind, and if you don't know what the answer will turn out to be, then this is the book for you. A bustling exercise in forestalling the obvious that's just the ticket for Mary Higgins Clark's less demanding fans.
Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1997
ISBN: 1-55611-515-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of...
Coben (The Stranger, 2015, etc.) hits the bull’s eye again with this taut tale of a disgraced combat veteran whose homefront life is turned upside down by an image captured by her nanny cam.
Recent widows can’t be too careful, and the day she buries the husband who was shot by a pair of muggers in Central Park, Maya Burkett installs a concealed camera in her home to keep an eye on Lily, her 2-year-old daughter, and her nanny, Isabella Mendez , while she’s out at her job as a flight instructor. She’s shocked beyond belief when she checks the footage and sees images of her murdered husband returned from the grave to her den. Confronted with the video, Isabella claims she doesn’t see anything that looks like Joe Burkett, then blasts Maya with pepper spray and takes off with the memory card. Should Maya go to the police? They were no help when her sister, Claire, was killed in a home invasion while she was deployed in the Middle East, and she doesn’t trust Roger Kierce, the NYPD homicide detective heading the investigation of Joe’s murder. Besides, Maya’s already juggling a heavy load of baggage. Whistle-blower Corey Rudzinski ended her military career when he posted footage of her ordering a defensive airstrike that killed five civilians, and she’s just waiting for him to release the audio feed that would damage her reputation even more. So after Kierce drops a bombshell—the same gun was used to shoot both Joe and Claire—Maya launches her own investigation, little knowing that it will link both murders to the death more than 10 years ago of Joe’s brother Andrew and the secrets the wealthy and powerful Burkett family has been hiding ever since.
Once again, Coben marries his two greatest strengths—masterfully paced plotting that leads to a climactic string of fireworks and the ability to root all the revelations in deeply felt emotions—in a tale guaranteed to fool even the craftiest readers a lot more than once.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95509-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Though Christie fans may be particularly delighted, this propulsive, pitch-perfect thriller has something for everyone.
A group of friends at a British college, all connected to the same charismatic scholar of Agatha Christie’s work, are torn apart by secrets and deceptions.
When Jess Walker begins to contemplate going to college, there is only one clear choice: She has to attend the university where Dr. Lorna Clay teaches. Lorna is the author of The Truants, a brilliant work arguing that great artists must destroy their personal lives to create, which has captured Jess’ imagination ever since she was given the book by her uncle. Once Jess starts college in East Anglia, she strikes up a friendship with Georgie, a wealthy socialite with a proclivity to dipping into her mother’s pill drawer; Alec, a 20-something white South African journalist on fellowship at the university; and Nick, a geology student who quickly falls for Jess. A middle child from a farming village, Jess instantly feels her life become more vibrant in the company of her exotic companions. And at the head of it all is the brilliant Lorna, who permeates the boundaries of their lives as students to attend their parties and become their confidante and, eventually, their friend, especially to Jess, who wants to follow in Lorna’s footsteps professionally and personally. But as the relationships among the five become more and more tangled, a tragedy suddenly shatters their lives, forcing Jess to confront the illusory nature of really knowing another. Aside from some slight plausibility issues (if only teenagers’ lives were changed by works of literary scholarship!), Weinberg has written one of the best thriller debuts in recent years, with all the cleverness of Ruth Ware (and, yes, even Christie herself) and a dash of Donna Tartt’s edgy darkness.
Though Christie fans may be particularly delighted, this propulsive, pitch-perfect thriller has something for everyone.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54196-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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