An absorbing story of addiction, deceit, and perpetual menace.
A U.S. government agent in the near future stumbles onto a conspiracy to brainwash citizens in Goodman’s debut thriller.
It’s 2023, and the latest assignment for agent Hunter Leary of the Domestic Central Intelligence Agency is looking into a documentary film, currently in production, about Project Oedipus, an alleged “deep-state conspiracy to addict [American] leaders and create sex scandals,” as a Variety article put it. However, the main purpose for DCIA’s formation was to investigate the Hidden Ones, who are rumored to be responsible for many nefarious activities. The group, which has existed for a century, is known by other names, such as “the Freemasons” or “the Illuminati,” and their existence was only confirmed two years ago. Currently, Hunter and his new partner, Sammi Pringle, are keeping an eye on a different secret society, known as the Nameless, which apparently has a plan to control “key players” in society with “some sort of sexual brainwashing.” Hunter is a capable DCIA agent, but he’s also a habitual user of the drug Splurge, which he believes enhances his senses. But its potential benefits may not be enough to help him take on the members of the shady organizations that surround him. Hunter’s first-person narration is framed as a historical account, but the overall story plays out like a well-paced thriller. Shifts to a third-person perspective reveal characters’ furtive agendas and shocking deaths. Moreover, there’s an overarching mystery of how Splurge, as well as Banshees—“neotech-networks” that offer “instantaneous, emotional connections with every other user currently online”—will spawn an imminent “Great Addiction.” Despite this story’s reliance on abstract ideas, Goodman provides readers with plenty of concrete details, as in descriptions of Hunter’s Splurge highs (“Thoughts arrange themselves into a regular order, like an architectural structure”). The tale also features explicit sexual encounters and copious amounts of bodily fluids. The conclusion is satisfying, but there’s definite room for a sequel, particularly as readers learn relatively little about the titular Banshees.
An absorbing story of addiction, deceit, and perpetual menace.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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