A spooky, strange, and enjoyable supernatural novel.
Tarsitano offers a macabre tale of terror and teeth.
At the opening of this psychological thriller, Johnny Hawk is tied to an old dentist’s chair in a basement, terrified and injured, horrified that his “teeth were gone—and not the ones that were supposed to go.” Readers learn through flashbacks and chapters told from other characters’ points of view that Hawk’s life was thrown into chaos after he discovered his wife was having an affair with another man, leaving him feeling like “a voiceless spectator in a red-light theatre that was playing the movie about the failure of his life.” He eventually heads out toward Los Angeles by car, picking up a hitchhiker and friend along the way, before crossing paths in New Mexico with dentist Wendy Jag after a painful tooth causes him to nearly crash his car. Readers soon learn that she’s actually the novel’s titular character—a sadistic, evil being. Tarsitano’s debut novel unfolds largely in fictional Copper City, which one supporting character describes as cursed; it holds many dark secrets and is, in some ways, reminiscent of Stephen King’s Castle Rock, Maine. Readers of suspense will enjoy Jag’s unnerving backstory as well as the friendships between Hawk and some of the other supporting characters (particularly Jamie, the hitchhiker). Some elements will specifically remind readers of The Shining (1977) and The Dark Half (1989), including its creepy talismans, such as an object left at Jag’s father’s gravesite, “a small pearl, lodged in a thin strip of fresh dirt,” that turns out to be a child’s tooth. There’s some solid horror writing here, with a style that has considerable bite.
A spooky, strange, and enjoyable supernatural novel.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-38595-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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