Another top-notch effort by Murphy, one of the most distinctive of young crime-oriented novelists.
Strange things are happening in the Massachusetts resort town of Buzzards Bay, where a group of old college friends has reunited at a large summer house.
Jim, the narrator, a lawyer, inherited the ancestral home and turned it into a retreat for his circle of close friends. He and his wife, Valentina, and twin children are joined there by Maya, an art teacher, and her pregnant wife, Shannon; Rami, a diplomat who spends much of his time in Europe; and Jim’s late-arriving, ill-tempered best friend, Bruce, writer of a popular series of crime-solving novels about a philosophy professor. A physical brawl between Jim and Bruce and the latter’s subsequent disappearance are the first of a string of odd, unexplained events to pierce the idyllic surroundings. Is the creaking and heaving house “troubled,” as is suggested by a "self-appointed medium” from the local library who convinces Jim to conduct a séance there? The woman fails to make contact with Bruce or anyone else, succeeding only in stirring up unpleasant thoughts among the friends—and between Jim and Valentina in both their waking and dream lives. “Little secrets, all around: Somehow, they never brought me anything but pleasure,” muses Jim. Until they don’t. Though the climax seems forced, the sly, subversive way Murphy undercuts Agatha Christie and Big Chill tropes keeps the reader on edge. As with his previous novel, The Stolen Coast (2023), he makes the most of the coastal setting, advancing the belief of Jim’s forebearers that it has “a special wavelength or disposition” conducive to ghosts.
Another top-notch effort by Murphy, one of the most distinctive of young crime-oriented novelists.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780593833179
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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