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
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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