An intriguing murder mystery that readers will rush to finish.
In Barr’s thriller, a woman unravels a family history of deceit.
Grace Rendell is the daughter of a sadistic billionaire and is married to a man who’s successful and handsome but wants nothing to do with her physically or emotionally. Grace has been in therapy with Dr. Emma Leighmann since she was young, when her father had her committed to a mental institution. She regularly prescribes Grace a cocktail of psychotropic medications, thus keeping her heavily sedated. In the novel’s opening scene, Grace stands over the dead body of the successful mystery writer who goes by the name Lynn Andrews, which leads the reader to wonder if she’s had a psychotic break. Or is she actually more stable than her supposed caregivers acknowledge? The novel then jumps back to four months earlier, when Grace is in the process of weaning herself off her prescription medication and starting to realize that her marriage may not be what it seems. Determined to seize control of her life and her narrative, Grace joins a writing group where she meets Lynn. The women become friends, and Lynn agrees to help Grace write her mystery novel—not realizing that the troubled woman’s book is a thinly veiled account of her husband and her father, who may well be plotting her demise. Barr’s psychological thriller is expertly paced as it oscillates between Grace’s seemingly valid suspicions and her paranoia, and the author slowly builds the character’s credibility as the story goes on. She also develops other intriguing characters, such as Lynn’s brother, Joe “Hack” Hackford, who struggles with his own financial troubles. His desperation, and Grace’s, will cause them to bond in unexpected ways. Barr’s narrative can, at times, feel slightly over-the-top due its its elaborate web of conniving players. However, it’s still a wild ride whose propulsive energy will keep readers turning pages.
An intriguing murder mystery that readers will rush to finish.Pub Date: July 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68433-556-5
Page Count: 255
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.
An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine.
Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she’s a “no-frills” person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship’s departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend’s atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that’s nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something’s off, but she can’t put together the pieces. That’s because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who’s patient and sensible to the end, you’ll just have to wait.
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780062998101
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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