A quick-paced, well-plotted novel set during a German invasion.
An inexperienced British soldier becomes caught in the Battle of France in Saint’s military thriller series starter.
It’s May 1940, and British Army 2nd Lt. Tennyson Drake is on a reconnaissance mission in neutral Belgium’s Ardennes Forest. When the German First Panzer Division suddenly bursts through the trees and kills Drake’s commander, he’s left corralling his unit’s survivors on the wrong side of the battle line. All he has, in terms of orders, is a bloody notebook his dying captain handed to him, containing a drawing of a raven and pages of code: “Letters and numbers. Long lines of letters and numbers. There was nothing else in it. No orders. No instructions. No explanations. Just letters, numbers, and a bird.” Until a few months ago, Drake was just a “schoolie”—a barracks tutor—and he had no combat experience until today. Now Germany’s finest armored division has struck at a place that no one predicted: the impenetrable, and therefore lightly defended, Ardennes. The war has come, and Drake must try to prevent a complete collapse of the Allied defense. To do so, he must figure out the meaning of the raven book and the true mission that his unit was sent there to complete. Saint’s prose is sharp and suspenseful, rarely letting up as the story briskly unravels with all the haste of a retreating army. Here, for example, is Saint’s description as Drake makes it to the town of Sedan just as the German army is about to seize control of the area: “There, ahead of them at last, was the French defensive line. Barbed wire and machine gun posts encircled the city and blocked the road. But the straggling French soldiers were still running back, anxious faces glancing over their shoulders.” The author has written a propulsive, mystery-driven narrative that manages to effectively capture the stakes and scope of the real-life battle it portrays. Die-hard history buffs may take issue with a few authorial liberties, but fans of World War II films will certainly enjoy this cinematic offering.
A quick-paced, well-plotted novel set during a German invasion.Pub Date: April 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781916618008
Page Count: 454
Publisher: Arcus Editions
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
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