A polished, cinematic crime tale that’s both edge-of-your-seat thrilling and seamlessly entertaining.
A newly married Southern California couple become embroiled in a tangled web of embezzlement and mob money.
After the success of his well-received spiritual/supernatural debut, Soul Catcher (1995), Kersey’s second novel follows landscaper Grayson Reynolds and his wife, Heide, a hedge fund associate. They are struggling through their first year of marriage, wedged within the suffocating grip of household debt. Believing she has the ultimate answer, Heide, together with her boss, hatches a plan to covertly pilfer $100 million, putting it into a Cayman Islands bank. Her secret is violently exposed when the couple, on a yacht with Heide’s boss, are attacked by a gun-toting female assassin who kills everyone onboard except Gray, who narrowly escapes. An FBI interrogation reveals the money Heide diverted belonged to the Sinaloa cartel, a ruthless and viciously cutthroat Mexican crime syndicate that wants its laundered drug money returned, at any cost. Terrified and desperate to escape into obscurity, Gray, in an ultimate act of self-preservation, goes into hiding in the Cascade Mountains north of Seattle at a trout hatchery owned by a kindhearted family. Country life as a farmhand suits Gray well, but Kersey knows how to keep the tension taut as the inevitable end to the protagonist’s self-imposed concealment casts gloom over every move he makes. The blooming romantic affections for Gray from two sisters cause the kinds of complications he doesn’t need as he tries to crack the password to his murdered wife’s Cayman Islands bank account and keep the money for himself. Gray is a reliable narrator, and though the plot is simple, it’s also engrossing. The author keeps his list of characters compact and his plot kinetic and tightly spring-loaded with plenty of surprises to keep readers on their toes. By the time Heide’s past comes back to haunt Gray, readers will be more than ready for the unavoidable rush of mob-fueled revenge to descend on the bucolic farmland. The rousing finale pits Gray against an adversary in a bullet-riddled face-off filled with breathless suspense.
A polished, cinematic crime tale that’s both edge-of-your-seat thrilling and seamlessly entertaining.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63752-865-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
