A steady mix of weird and creepy makes for an effective, if unpolished, thriller.
A retiree faces off against his eccentric neighbors in this novel.
At the age of 53, Andrew Lelling, who is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, has been forced into early retirement. He and his younger wife, Emily, are struggling financially after the failure of his startup business. They move from their home in Providence, Rhode Island, to Quail Run at Misty Hollow Lake, a housing development in Florida. Along with an infestation of citrus rats and scabies-covered Spanish moss, their new house is surrounded by peculiar neighbors, from the too-friendly swinger couple Richard and Pattie Conway to Betty Desantis and her ever-changing grandchildren and the Vietnam veteran Capt. Craig Blackwell, with his paranoid wife and a violent pair of German shepherds. All of them share an odd connection to Russell Kluger, a lawyer with designs on Emily. Spurred on by constantly barking dogs and their troubled marriage, Andrew and Emily are sucked into an organization called The One, seemingly a cult that worships a giant alligator kept in the lake, holds orgies, and sacrifices members in order to sell their organs and continue to fund depraved activities. Andrew wonders if he deserves the dark turn his life has taken. Past memories and the voice of Big Beth, a woman from his teens with the mind of a child, whom he and his friends took advantage of for sex, haunts his dreams, urging him to strike against The One. Borowsky’s novel is a legitimately unsettling thriller, embracing the Satanic Panic genre with a modern twist, integrating disturbing imagery with positively Floridian touches of oddball retirees and human sacrifices utilizing pool noodles. The cast is impressive. The redneck child eaters and yuppie sex addicts are obviously the frightening stars of the show, but lesser characters like a foul-mouthed exterminator and a duo of gossipy, choruslike librarians help convey the necessary exposition and add to the story’s absurd charm. The book overall is pretty rough; inconsistent punctuation and characters’ names sometimes spelled differently distract from the tale. And as visions of Big Beth begin to torment Andrew, it becomes more difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually happening.
A steady mix of weird and creepy makes for an effective, if unpolished, thriller.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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