Meyer’s eighth Griessel and Cupido book makes demands of the reader, but ones that get rewarded.
South African detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido, demoted from their elite violent crimes unit in Cape Town and shipped out to a sleepy university town, are awakened by a murder that will connect with the heist of millions of dollars in gold.
The perpetrators of the heist are former members of the South African Special Forces—plus, as their “honey trap,” a hard-edged beauty who worked with one of the plotters in the past and is currently biding time as a wildlife guide. The job goes spectacularly, violently wrong, leaving people dead and wounded and a surviving thief out for vengeance—and a second shot at the bullion. At first, the murder of a local businessman appears to the long-partnered Griessel and Cupido to be an isolated hit job. But the more they dig into the case, the more complicated it becomes, especially after a second victim is killed in the same way as the first—with filler foam sprayed down his throat. Griessel, a recovering alcoholic pushing 50, and the several-years-younger Cupido, who’s anxious about his partner’s upcoming wedding, are hopeful that solving the case will get them reappointed to the special unit known as the Hawks. But as the crimes take on South African and international political trappings, Griessel and Cupido’s detective skills may not be enough. As is often the case with Meyer’s sharply divided narratives, readers may find themselves wanting a pair of trifocals to keep all the plotlines straight. (References to past novels are actually footnoted.) The protagonists drop out of the novel for long stretches, but there’s a lot to like in Meyer’s quirky approach, which makes up for all the business related to Griessel’s wedding—including the need to make it to the altar in time—with action-packed scenes.
Meyer’s eighth Griessel and Cupido book makes demands of the reader, but ones that get rewarded.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780802164230
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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