A rousing, topical thriller that keeps an ongoing saga moving at a brisk pace.
In this third installment of Myers’ Black Camelot series, white supremacist organizations seeking murderous revenge incite a race war.
A trio of successful, affluent businesspeople make up a group known as Black Camelot in New York City. Their mere existence makes them targets for hate groups, with the powerful Before Emancipation organization going to great lengths to kill them. Luckily, the Society of Protectors, a private army, so efficiently safeguards Black Camelot that the members don’t even realize they’re in danger. But lately, things have changed; BE’s fury over many of its men falling to the Protectors leads the organization to go after Black Camelot and their allies with a vengeance. And this time, BE’s skilled assassins manage to kill more than one of their targets. Now, it seems, any friends of Black Camelot, or anyone who’s ever helped them, are at grave risk. With help from the nefarious secret society Pre-1860, BE funds a race war, one that the Protectors must put a stop to before more lives are lost. The author brings back many characters from preceding installments, including widow Dawn Davis Stuart and her beloved father-in-law, Yancey Stuart, both of whom are in the assassins’ sights. The bulk of the text is a string of phone calls in which people update others on deaths or murder attempts, an approach that works best for the Protectors’ enigmatic leader, “the Voice” (“We have come up with a name for this entire offensive; we call it Project Maim”). The very size of the cast generates suspense, since the killers could go gunning for any number of people. As in the previous entry, series regulars Donald Alexander, Kwame Mills, and Samantha Rivers (who are Black Camelot) make relatively few appearances, but further planned sequels should give these three ample opportunities to retake the narrative reins.
A rousing, topical thriller that keeps an ongoing saga moving at a brisk pace.Pub Date: July 8, 2021
ISBN: 9798534010404
Page Count: 351
Publisher: Fero Scitus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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