by Gus Leodas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2012
Despite the occasional awkwardness, Leodas continually moves the story forward.
In Leodas’ thriller, Johanna Wagner and Michael Warner become the unwitting catalysts in a tense conspiracy, launched long before they were born, to gain economic and political control of the United States government.
Their story begins in 1945, with the brutal murders of seven seemingly random people in Milwaukee, Wis. By 1995, Johanna has just graduated from college, and Michael is working for a U.S. Senator. Although their lives appear to be on different trajectories, they have much in common. They’re both pampered children of wealthy parents and oblivious to the dangerous secrets of their parents’ pasts. These secrets are soon violently revealed, as is their link to each other through the powerful men who have shaped both their lives. The tension builds steadily as Leodas (A Sorority Of Angels, 2012) gradually pulls the disparate storylines together in a chilling climax full of twists and turns. As their formerly protected lives unravel, Johanna and Michael confront the deadly threats against them with surprising resourcefulness and tenacity. There’s enough foreshadowing to keep each plot twist from being a complete shock but enough intrigue to keep the pages turning. Leodas’ unusual writing style sometimes distracts. He frequently avoids the passive voice by simply deleting “is” and “was,” a technique that’s often unsuccessful: “By nightfall, Johanna tormented to the edge of control.” Other sentences appear to be carefully crafted to avoid similar writing pitfalls, resulting in nearly incomprehensible prose: “Both forty-six years old, married upon finishing high school and enjoying excellent health except for an occasional ache in Erwin’s knees, an old football injury in high school when a speedy running back; the Glory Days of his life.” Still, the author guides the plot with a light hand to keep it believable.
Despite the occasional awkwardness, Leodas continually moves the story forward.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478266891
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Riley Sager ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2022
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
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