The setup is irresistible, the twists generously piled on and the climax suitably pulse-pounding, even though best-selling...
Eighteen years after her fiance dumped her, a New York City police detective runs into him again online, with results that make her head spin and leave several people dead.
Given a one-year subscription to YouAreJustMyType.com, Kat Donovan browses languidly through the photos of eligible men looking for love until she sees the face of Jeff Raynes. Although she’s not exactly carrying a torch for her ex, she can’t resist dropping him a line. His reactions are puzzling. First he doesn’t seem to remember her, then he greets her with warm affection, then he says they’d better not continue to be in touch. Jeff’s not the only one acting oddly. Brandon Phelps, a college student from Connecticut, comes all the way to New York to ask for Kat’s help in finding his missing mother, Dana. Even though he’s asked for Kat by name—how does he even know her name?—it’s obvious that he’s hiding something from the detective whose help he begs. And there’s more. When Kat goes to visit Monte Leburne, the dying contract killer who was convicted years ago of shooting her father, another NYPD detective, and the prison nurse puts Leburne into twilight sedation, he denies killing Henry Donovan. No matter where she turns, Kat can’t figure out what’s going on or whom she can trust. Jeff, who’s vanished once more? The unreliable Brandon Phelps? Her partner, Charles "Chaz" Faircloth, who’s convinced he’s God’s gift to Kat? Her father’s ex-partner, Capt. Thomas Stagger, who’s clearly not telling everything he knows about Donovan’s death? Her judo instructor, Aqua, a schizophrenic, homeless sometime transvestite? Her defensive mother, Hazel, who seems determined to protect Donovan’s reputation? Her own cherished memories of her father?
The setup is irresistible, the twists generously piled on and the climax suitably pulse-pounding, even though best-selling Coben (Six Years, 2013, etc.) is hard-pressed to tie all those complications together or produce a payoff that rises to their deliciously suspenseful levels.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-525-953-49-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fans will spot the last twist a mile away, but it doesn’t matter. For once Scottoline subordinates the criminal plot to the...
Legal and illegal shenanigans take a back seat to mother love and its vicissitudes in Scottoline’s barn-burning crossover novel about every adoptive mother’s worst nightmare.
Even though the escalating homicide count in Philadelphia includes more and more children and economic clouds portend layoffs at her newspaper, features reporter Ellen Gleeson has her own private store of sunshine: her three-year-old son Will, whom she fell in love with two years ago when a story about pediatric care brought her to his hospital bedside. Because Will had a heart defect and his mother couldn’t care for him, she was willing to sign him over to a single mother, a decision Ellen has blessed every day of her life—until the day she sees a circular asking, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?” with the photograph of a boy whose resemblance to Will is uncanny. Timothy Braverman, abducted from his wealthy Florida parents, Carol and Bill, in a carjacking that went horribly wrong, hasn’t been seen since. Despite her dread of confirming her fear that Will is Tim, Ellen can’t help neglecting her job (with predictably dire professional results) to gather more information about him, partly because of her reporter’s nose for a story, but mostly because she wants what’s best for her son, no matter the cost. The trail leads her to a garage full of adoption folders, some unwelcome revelations about Will’s birth mother and a tense game of hide-and-seek with the Bravermans as she realizes what a hornet’s nest her questions have stirred up, and how determined someone is to make sure this is one story she doesn’t break. Though the blood-and-thunder climax arrives a mite early, there’s one final twist in reserve.
Fans will spot the last twist a mile away, but it doesn’t matter. For once Scottoline subordinates the criminal plot to the human-interest story that rides sidesaddle in all her thrillers (Lady Killer, 2008, etc.), and the result is her best book yet.Pub Date: April 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-38072-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
Summer reading doesn't get better than this.
Hiding a teenage murder witness among a bunch of delinquent kids in a survival-training program in Montana seemed like a good idea. But when two coldblooded killers track him there from Indiana, everyone's life is at grave risk.
The program is run by Air Force veteran Ethan Serbin, who lives with his wife, Allison, in a mountain cabin. She distrusts Jamie Bennett, a federal marshal and former trainee of Ethan's who shows up in the middle of the night, having recklessly driven into a blizzard, to plead for their help. Jamie says the boy, Jace Wilson, is too hot for even a witness protection program. When Jace arrives, it's anonymously, under the name Connor Reynolds. He's badly lacking in confidence but proves adept in handling himself outdoors. Just as he's settling in, though, the killers—two brothers with a creepy way of conversing with each other even as they're about to commit an atrocity—infiltrate the mountain community. Knowing what they're capable of, Jace/Connor drifts away from the pack, teams up with a female fire ranger who feels responsible for her boyfriend's accidental death and fervently hopes an escape route he devised as part of his training will lead them to safety. Having joined the ranks of the very best thriller writers with his small-town masterpiece, The Prophet (2012), Koryta matches that effort with a book of sometimes-unbearable tension. With the exception of one plot turn you'll likely see coming from a mountain pass away, this novel is brilliantly orchestrated. Also crucial to its success is Koryta's mastery of the beautiful but threatening setting, including a mountain fire's ability to electrify the ground, radiate a lethal force field—and create otherworldly light shows.
Summer reading doesn't get better than this.Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-12255-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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