A highly eventful but fast-paced supernatural thriller.
In Armstrong’s paranormal mystery, a young woman, haunted by a ghost, joins her adoptive family’s private investigation business and becomes entangled in a case involving child kidnapping and trafficking.
In Rubyville, Virginia, 21-year-old private eye Justyne Diamond “JD” Wolfe is no stranger to tragedy. After she lost her mother to a hotel room fire at age 8, a stringy-haired, lavender-smelling female ghost who was haunting her drug-abusing mom transferred to her. Events often descend into chaos when the spirit’s spectral presence is around. Also, JD believes that the ghost abandoned her early on, when the young girl was molested by a 16-year-old boy in St. Francis’ Group Home for Lost Souls. A few years later, a military family adopted JD; they owned an agency called White Wolfe Investigations. Now, as an adult, she’s determined to prove her worth as a PI—and as a member of the Wolfe family. But JD’s first job goes awry, and soon, straightforward surveillance missions lead to an investigation into murders and kidnappings connected to an international trafficking organization. The pace of Armstrong’s mystery is swift, but it effectively allows space for a number of emotional subplots: JD grows close to a local baseball hero’s unclaimed child and his large, loving Italian family, and she explores her relationships with her own painting talent and with a scarred bomb-disposal veteran. She also investigates possible infidelity between her father and his deceased best friend’s wife. JD’s voice often seems distractingly mature for her age at times, but the novel’s treatment of her insecurity rings true throughout. Some readers may find a few comments problematic; there are multiple comparisons of characters to Asian celebrities but no Asian characters in the novel, other than a villainous one. Delicate subjects and traumatic recollections involve child sexual assault, human trafficking, suicide bombing, and PTSD.
A highly eventful but fast-paced supernatural thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
