A brisk but underdeveloped Boston-set thriller.
An Uber driver is pulled into a deadly drug ring in Muchnik’s debut crime novel.
Tom Sullivan is barely scraping by as an Uber driver, so when a flashy gentleman with a Harvard business degree, François Laax, offers him $500 cash to deliver a package to an apartment on the other side of Boston, he immediately agrees. Tom doesn’t plan on staying in François’ employ for long, but he quickly takes a liking to Molly Mancini, the young art student François is trying to convince to help him start an escort service. Meanwhile, the fentanyl that Tom is unwittingly transporting is causing deaths all over Boston. Police detective Lou DelVecchio is tasked with catching whoever is behind the spike in overdoses, and it doesn’t take him long to learn François’ name. Luckily for him, Lou’s favorite sex worker, Gina Bel Geddes, counts the dealer among her customers. As the cops close in, Tom and Molly take to opportunity to steal $20,000 of François’ money—but he isn’t afraid to use lethal violence to get it back, and unless Lou finds a way to bring the criminal to justice, Tom and Molly are doomed. Muchnik’s prose is spare and stylized, with clipped sentences replicating his characters’ urgent inner lives: “Why not. That was what got Tom running Oxy to Rozzie”—the Boston neighborhood of Roslindale—"and coming back with scads of cash. Why not. Putting himself on the line for five hundred bucks a run twice a week.” The story moves along nicely and makes good use of its urban Massachusetts setting. There are some fun bit players, such as Trey Jackson, a former college quarterback from Cape Cod–turned–drug dealer. Unfortunately, Muchnik doesn’t take the time to build much suspense, nor does he give the reader much reason to care about who lives or who dies. He certainly could have expanded the tale to do so—the novel has fewer than 150 pages—but as it stands, the novel sprints by leaving without leaving much of an impression.
A brisk but underdeveloped Boston-set thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2022
ISBN: 979-8844301162
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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