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
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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