A kidnapping thriller that also effectively highlights the plight of a marginalized population.
A woman’s chance for a new beginning is derailed by the horrors of human trafficking in Hanes’ novel.
Maria Puente, at the age of 22, is headed from her native Mexico to the United States on an H-1B visa, which makes her eligible to work in nonagricultural businesses for a minimum of three years. When Maria boards the bus that will take her from her “comfortable nest” in Monterrey to a brand-new life in North Carolina, she’s determined to make her family proud. Her future includes a home with her Uncle Tomás and a job as a translator and computer programmer, but the rest of the passengers have only temporary agricultural visas to do grueling fieldwork in rural America. During a travel break at a rest stop, Maria overhears the only other two female passengers having a heated argument; before she knows it, she’s kidnapped by members of a human trafficking ring that’s run by an American agricultural company. Sheriff Will Moser of North Carolina’s Hogg County leads a team in a tense race to recover Maria and bring the traffickers to justice. The story is told hour by hour over 12 days, and Hanes’ prose is tight, forthright, and no-nonsense as he illuminates the lives of multiple characters willing to risk everything for a chance at survival. He tells a story that’s fast-paced and tense even as it addresses serious topics. Sheriff Moser is depicted as blunt and to the point when he expresses his disgust for the corrupt company behind the kidnapping: “They’re sucking the blood out of this place, leaving it with dead migrant workers, enslaved prostitutes, and people vitiated by drugs.” Hanes is also careful to show how Maria later starts to process the trauma she’s experienced, as when she admits that she can’t shake the horror: “I don’t think those memories have anywhere to hide in my brain.”
A kidnapping thriller that also effectively highlights the plight of a marginalized population.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 344
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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