An often exciting tale of medical malfeasance and wide-ranging criminality.
After a doctor is invited to review the tragic death of a patient, he discovers a wider conspiracy in Cooper’s series thriller.
Brad Parker, the cell-biologist director of the Maine Translational Research Institute, receives a call from Jerome Lazarus, the president of the prestigious Bateman Cancer Center, requesting help. Lazarus wants Parker to serve on a panel assessing the death of Victoria Altman, a woman who received an extraordinary overdose of medication. The two principal candidates for responsibility are Patricia Northrup, the physician who wrote the prescription, and Theodore Willingham, the doctor who administered it. Parker concludes that Northrup’s instructions were adequately clear and that Willingham—who, in Parker’s opinion, comes across as an “arrogant asshole”—bears the blame. However, the panel decides otherwise, which Parker finds bizarre. Later, he offers a disgraced Northrup a job at his institute and learns that she plans to sue the Bateman Cancer Center, but before she can, she’s shot and killed. Parker quickly suspects Willingham, but he turns up dead in a similar fashion, leading Parker, with the help of his romantic partner, FBI agent Karen Richmond, to conduct his own investigation. In this fifth installment of an ongoing series, Cooper deftly uncoils a complex scheme that not only involves murder, but also human trafficking. Despite its complications, the plot advances at a brisk pace, and the book is brimming with cinematic action and intrigue. However, the author flirts with melodrama at times, and the dialogue can come across as a bit stale, as when Parker threatens a villain who’s holding Karen against her will; the bad guy replies: “You’ll do what, lover boy?...I can promise that the two of you will be reunited before this is finished. Although you won’t exactly enjoy yourselves.” For the most part, though, the novel is a gripping and entertaining read.
An often exciting tale of medical malfeasance and wide-ranging criminality.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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