Boldly drawn characters shoulder mysteries set among elite Washington power brokers.
A photojournalist notices too many odd things for her own good.
Sophie Medina is struggling to deal with the death of her husband, a CIA spy supposedly killed in an accident. Even former Secretary of State Quill Russell, a family friend, won’t reveal much, but he does ask Sophie to shoot photos for a book about his Virginia home as an anniversary gift for his wife, Vicki. On an early morning trip to shoot the last of the photos, she sees Vicki naked in the pool with a man who isn't her husband. Upset, Sophie flees, determined to say nothing. Stopping at her mother’s nearby home, she learns about the handwritten will of her recently deceased grandfather, a famous photographer, which leaves everything but his cameras to a small arts school. When she meets former boyfriend Jack O’Hara, now a Jesuit priest, for a run and dinner, they find an unconscious man lying in an alley; Jack recognizes him as Supreme Court Justice Everett Townsend, and Sophie sees he’s the naked man from Vicki’s pool. The justice is disliked by many and has a reputation as a womanizer. Maybe that’s why his wife, Diana, who Jack says is a living saint, seems all too eager to have him cremated as soon as he’s died. A young formerly homeless man named Javier Aguilera, whom Sophie's been helping to become a photojournalist, tells her he was in the ER when Justice Townsend came in—except it wasn’t Justice Townsend. Javi says it was a homeless man with dementia who was Townsend's doppelgänger and who was known around town as “the Professor.” That information sets Sophie on a frustrating trip to try to prove what she’s come to suspect.
Boldly drawn characters shoulder mysteries set among elite Washington power brokers.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781448308033
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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