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CAN'T GO BACK

A complex, exciting mystery starring two cops notable for both their crime-solving chops and their ongoing romance.

Two Birmingham, Alabama, homicide detectives must revisit the past to solve a red-hot case.

Kerri Devlin never thought her partnership with former undercover cop Luke Falco would work out. Now both lovers and partners, they're called on by the chief of police to investigate the death of Allison Boothe and her daughter, Leah, in a house fire.  The property is owned by Jana Scott, Allison's mother and the widow of the police department's assistant chief. Allison's husband, Logan Boothe, a former cop himself, is found badly hurt on the lawn. Luke knows Boothe from his stint working undercover with Narcotics. After Boothe quit the force, he and Allison separated, but they got back together when Leah was diagnosed with leukemia. Once Boothe is well enough to speak, he says he started the fire that killed his family, a claim Kerri and Luke don’t believe for a minute. Luke is strangely reluctant to question the boss he shared with Boothe, but the case forces him to return to the time when he worked with Lt. Patrick O’Grady—a history he’s desperate to forget. The case is complicated by bad relations between mothers-in-law, a witness who’s a family friend, and an awful lot of lies spun out in an attempt to cover old secrets. In order to find a killer, Luke must force himself to confront his past and save his future.

A complex, exciting mystery starring two cops notable for both their crime-solving chops and their ongoing romance.

Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5420-3231-5

Page Count: 309

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021

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WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.

Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.

Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.

A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9780593548981

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024

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TELL ME WHAT YOU DID

Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.

A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.

Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?

Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025

ISBN: 9781464226229

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Poisoned Pen

Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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