A rare misfire by one of spy fiction’s most consistent artists.
#MeToo-banished Hollywood comic Hal Knight is roped by the CIA into spying on Eastern European oligarch Nikolai Horvatz—known to be a big fan of his films.
Knight, who has been hiding out on a Caribbean island, is asked by the agency to simply observe everything about (fictitious) Bolrovia’s “crypto-fascist strongman,” who is certain to invite the one-time star for an official visit. Given the chance to redeem himself or at least perform before a friendly audience, Knight agrees. But it isn’t long before his missteps start raising the hackles of Bolrovian security forces, led by the dour Branko Sarič, “the goon of all goons.” And when his big moment does arrive, Knight sends shock waves through the room and the media by appearing to make Horvatz the butt of a joke. With the violent cracking down on immigrants who have crossed Bolrovia’s southern border, not to mention the curious arrival of American media types including right-wing TV pundit Baxter Frederickson (read: Tucker Carlson), it is not a good time to be risking the president’s ire. A departure for Fesperman, who is known for his tense, finely wrought spy novels—most recently Winter Work (2022)—the new book does as well with a shaky concept as it could. But it’s never made clear what the CIA, which “had gone dark” in Bolrovia when Horvatz began cozying up to Russia and China, hopes to learn from Knight’s efforts. There’s also scant evidence that Knight is (or was) capable of being funny. His one-time popularity is as mysterious as the wisdom he supposedly derives from the marked-up copy of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral he carries around.
A rare misfire by one of spy fiction’s most consistent artists.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593802236
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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