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
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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