A deeply funny novel, artfully composed.
An American psychiatric patient who believes he is a British spy flies to London to save the woman he loves from an evil Russian oligarch in Orkin’s comic thriller.
In the fifth installment of this series, the author returns to the strange but hilarious plight of James Flynn, a patient at a psychiatric institution in Los Angeles. He suffers from delusion—despite growing up in Burbank, California, he believes he is a British agent in His Majesty’s Secret Service and that the hospital that houses him is really a clandestine redoubt providing him with a cover. Despite the inarguable insanity of these beliefs, he is an inexplicably talented man who has in fact become famous for saving the world repeatedly, making him a delightfully complicated hero, drawn with great comic effect. When Caitlyn Valentine (a CIA agent with whom he enjoyed a romantic connection) stops returning his phone calls, he assumes she’s in grave danger and tracks her down to London, accompanied by his psychiatric nurse (aptly named Sancho). He finds Caitlyn posing as a bodyguard for Oleg Ivanov, a nefarious Russian billionaire who owns a lab devoted to creating dangerous computer viruses and who plans to take over the world. This volume in the series is more prone to slapstick humor than its predecessors, as in this exchange between James and Sancho in which James complains about traffic rules in London: “‘Driving on the left feels rather wrong.’ ‘Yeah, but it’s right.’ ‘Right?’ Flynn started to veer. ‘No! Left! Left!’” The inventive premise of the series has lost some of its novelty, and, as a consequence, some of its comic sparkle. Still, James remains a memorable protagonist, one whose principal strength as a faux secret agent might be his mental health issues, which make him profoundly unpredictable. Despite lacking some of the luster of the earlier entries in the series, this stands as an endlessly entertaining novel.
A deeply funny novel, artfully composed.Pub Date: July 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781685134457
Page Count: 312
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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
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