The mother of all stories about women who unwittingly marry charming sociopaths and gradually awaken to their peril.
Iles’ pioneering psychological thriller, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Suspicion, returns from its first publication in 1932 to confront its myriad offspring.
When she first catches sight of Johnnie Aysgarth, youngest son of an impoverished aristocrat, Lina McLaidlaw is instantly swept off her feet by his playful insouciance and his exclusive focus on her to the neglect of everyone else on the scene. After a whirlwind courtship, they wed and enjoy a blissful honeymoon. It’s not till the couple returns to Dellfield, the spacious home Johnnie’s rented in Dorchester, that Lina, who stands to inherit £50,000 on her father’s death, learns that Johnnie doesn’t have a penny of his own or any idea how to make a living. She seeks to stem his endless cycle of borrowing greater and greater sums from anyone who’ll lend them by persuading him to take a job managing the estate of his distant relative Captain Melbeck, but then learns that he’s continued to gamble despite his promises to stop. In fact, Lina slowly comes to realize, she can’t believe a single word from her alluring, solicitous husband’s mouth. The pseudonymous Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971) paces the rising false notes with surgical precision, revealing Johnnie as a liar, a cheater, a gambler, a thief, and ultimately a murderer. The most telling development here is not of Johnnie, who smilingly declines to change, but of Lina, who evolves from his target to his victim to his accomplice. Modern readers may well shudder at her willful obliviousness, but fans who recognize the persistence of this formula to the present will acknowledge the power of this indispensable template for three generations of brides-in-distress that followed.
The mother of all stories about women who unwittingly marry charming sociopaths and gradually awaken to their peril.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781464237614
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
