An often-gripping story of family dysfunction and murder.
In Jeffries’ thriller, a woman is inspired by her ill father’s cryptic comments to investigate the death of her aunt.
In 1996, accountant Joanna Giordano devotedly tends to her aging, cranky father, Owen, who has Parkinson’s disease and struggles under a “bitter weight of resentment and regret” that he’s unable to explain to others. After Owen’s half brother, Horatio Billingham, dies, he must travel with Joanna from Cathedral, California, to his hometown of Pontiac, Illinois, for the reading of the will. Horatio was estranged from his son, Tazewell, so Owen becomes the sole heir of his property. While in Pontiac,Owen tells Joanna that his beloved, older half sister, Aldine Younger, was murdered at the age of 20 by a man named Asher Bentley, and that Owen’s mother believed that Bentley was hired by his uncle, Frederick Heinemann, who wanted Aldine’s considerable inheritance. Shortly after revealing what appears to be a shocking family secret, Owen has an episode that causes him to fade into a haze of unintelligibility and is hospitalized. This chilling tale was inspired by the true story of the author’s own aunt, also named Aldine Younger and is hauntingly conveyed by author Jeffries. Throughout the narrative, Joanna desperately tries to unravel the mystery of her relative’s death. She hopes to find justice, as well as a means to help her troubled father: “All Joanna knew was that a dead woman took her father captive and she had no idea how to bring him back to her side where he belonged.” Meanwhile, Tazewell tracks her progress and has nefarious designs on Owen’s new property. This is an unusual story that’s sometimes quite tangled and incredibly dark in tone, but it’s told with great poignancy by Jeffries, who writes that she aims to use the “liberating power of fiction” to revive a real-life tale. Her prose is informal in tone but agile, and she artfully crafts an atmosphere of dread. Overall, it’s a grim narrative, but an affecting and engaging one.
An often-gripping story of family dysfunction and murder.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781961302617
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Mission Point Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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