An unnerving tale that richly earns its title. By the last chapter, you won’t believe a word the narrator tells you.
A steep dive into the psyche of a man who may or may not have done some truly terrible things.
The first thing Ryodai Kozuka wants you to know is that that’s not his real name; he’s switched identities with someone else so that he can start a new life. Nor did the narrator push his half sister off a cliff when they were children; she fell on her own once he’d taken her into the woods to get her some breathing room from the home in which her father routinely beat their mother. The narrator isn’t a bit like Tsutomu Miyazaki, the Otaku Murderer of four young girls who was executed in 2008, not long after he reported being urged to commit his heinous crimes by a group of Rat Men only he could see. Instead, he’s a former doctor of psychosomatic medicine whose seduction of his vulnerable patient, sex worker Yukari, was entirely therapeutic, helping her recover from the sexual memories her previous physician, Dr. Yoshimi, had implanted in her. Implanted memories, it becomes gradually clear, are at the heart of this searing novella, though it’s not clear whether her treatment by the smilingly unrepentant Yoshimi or the narrator himself, who wonders if he really slept with her after all, is responsible for Yukari’s suicide. Once she’s hanged herself, the narrator vows to avenge himself on Kida and Mamiya, two former clients who showed her a video of herself that he’s convinced is what really drove her to take her life. Working with Wakui, the cafe owner whose budding relationship with Yukari had finally seemed to promise some stability in her life, he captures the two clients and starts messing with their own heads, and vice versa.
An unnerving tale that richly earns its title. By the last chapter, you won’t believe a word the narrator tells you.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-641-29272-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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
© 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.
