A whodunit that effortlessly navigates a complex plot and deepens its narrator’s characterization.
The murder of a friend’s postdoctoral researcher draws Dr. Brad Parker and Agent Karen Richmond into a decades-old scientific mystery.
Early on in this story, Brad remembers how he was asked to volunteer—“or, more accurately, voluntold”—to temporarily move from Boston University to the Maine Translational Research Institute and ended up staying on as director after he and Karen uncovered a scandal there. This nod to the previous entry in Cooper’s series, BadMedicine (2021), comes after he discovers Ellen Turner, a postdoctoral student of faculty member Carolyn Gelman, a character in that book, was murdered during an alleged break-in. Carolyn explains the crime occurred after Ellen received a cryptic email and a letter from her scientist uncle, John Lowell, regarding a mysterious, long-ago “sin against science and truth” that apparently drove fellow scientist Frank Carlisle out of academia. Brad agrees to ask Karen to help him investigate the matter; the pair soon find Frank’s body, an apparent suicide, which leads them to a botched raid on a home where Brad kills a suspect, which he finds very hard to handle. In this fourth series installment, the author again presents a first-person mystery in a style that’s reminiscent of classic noir, and its conversational, moderately sarcastic tone makes Brad a relatable narrator. However, it also extends into darker territory; for example, Brad’s PTSD after the shooting—which includes a vision of the suspect “falling to the ground with my bullets in his chest…dying in front of me, again and again”—reveals him as a vulnerable human being who mourns for someone who might have killed him without hesitation. Cooper also continues to effectively emphasize the complexities of the academic world; here, he disentangles the mystery of Lowell’s connection to Frank’s, Ellen’s, and Carolyn’s lives at a satisfying pace, offering moments of outrage along the way.
A whodunit that effortlessly navigates a complex plot and deepens its narrator’s characterization.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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