A fun read, loony in spots.
Sheepdogs boost a jet in the service of America’s off-the-books armies.
What’s in a name? asked Shakespeare. Quite a bit, apparently. Take sheepdogs, for example. As a man named Cheese explains to his wife, there are three types of people in the world: sheep, who don’t believe in evil; wolves, who prey upon them, and sheepdogs, who “understand violence, except they use that understanding to protect others.” He’s a sheepdog: an Afghan and a skilled pilot who works for a shadowy organization known as the Office and hopes to settle with his pregnant wife in America. He partners with Skwerl, an ex-Marine whose name would be Squirrel except that “Marines can’t spell for shit.” Nicknames are all assigned to them, and their real names don’t much matter anyway. The capital S Sheepdog hires them to go to Uganda and repossess—or steal, depending on one’s viewpoint—a Challenger 600 luxury jet and fly it to Marseille in exchange for a $1 million commission. Strangely, the main characters don’t know Sheepdog’s identity. Plenty of action ensues, of course, but the story is more caper than thriller, and protecting innocent lambs hardly seems the main thrust here. Don’t expect lots of gore or high body counts, even though the Russia-Ukraine war lurks in the background. A grizzly bear, a dominatrix named Mistress S, and a set of plates commissioned by Marie Antoinette keep the tone relatively light. Those fancy plates might be worth more than the plane even after they’ve broken a few, but not everyone is motivated by money. All Cheese really wants is not to have to work at the Esso station anymore. All that Ali Safi wants is to find the man responsible for his brother’s death. There are vivid images: “Just Shane” comes out of a shower wearing just a towel and a ski mask; Mistress S has tattoos on her wrist that record—ahem—how far she’s gone with clients. Author Ackerman is a skilled storyteller, weaving an unlikely set of details and making them look like they belong together. Compare this to the deadly serious 2034, which he co-authored with Admiral James Stavridis in 2021.
A fun read, loony in spots.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780593803851
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
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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