An entertaining and edifying crime drama.
In this novel, a lowly zoo worker in Ukraine gets inadvertently pulled into a criminal conspiracy that endangers his life.
Yuri Yavlinsky works as a menial laborer at the Kyiv Zoo—it’s not the most glamorous job, but he loves the animals and is an aspiring artist. Unfortunately, due to the zoo’s dire financial straits, Yuri is fired. Then he is charged with an inexplicable case of tax evasion. According to the government, he is the director of the Global Opportunities fund and owes about $30 million in tax bills, which he is accused of criminally dodging. As it turns out, Yuri sold his passport to make ends meet, and his identity was appropriated by a massive money-laundering conspiracy orchestrated by Viktor Raskolnovitch, a powerful and brutal oligarch. Yuri is convinced by his lawyer, Dora Osatinskaya, known for her crusades against government corruption, to use his identity to obtain financial records regarding this drug and money-laundering operation that implicate the highest levels of government. Yuri is successful and becomes obsessed with not only procuring more documentary evidence, but also looting the illegal organization’s coffers. Hoffman artfully begins with an inventively comic premise and from there constructs a complex and nuanced account of corruption in Ukraine. Raskolnovitch explains it plainly and powerfully: “Ukraine is very dangerous. Many scores to settle. Many gangs. There are powerful crime families. Some control ports, shipping, cars. Some liquor. Some prostitutes. Everyone wants to control politics.” The author deftly ties the briskly paced plot to the real political turbulence in Ukraine and paints an endearing tableau of the romance that blossoms between Yuri and Dora. While the story as a whole has a whiff of the fantastical about it, its ultimate implausibility doesn’t undermine its dramatic energy. For those readers in search of an intelligently conceived portrayal of contemporary Ukraine as well as a gripping tale of political intrigue, this is an enticing option.
An entertaining and edifying crime drama.Pub Date: March 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-38766-6
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Cutting Edge Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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