Journalism and spycraft make for compelling bedfellows in Porter’s latest thriller.
Sidelined by MI5 for her violent tendencies—never mind that she was being sexually assaulted when she crowned her assailant with a champagne bottle—Agent Slim Parsons is summoned back to investigate a shadowy news site.
For months, Slim has been in hiding from her vengeance-seeking would-be rapist, billionaire money launderer Ivan Guest, whom she was secretly investigating. Her new job is to pose as a reporter at Middle Kingdom, an upstart news organization located north of London near historic Bletchley Park, that’s suspected of hacking top-security government systems for its big stories. With her brother missing, possibly killed by Guest, and her mother recovering from a home invasion attack, Slim is as loathe to play by the rules of journalism as of MI5. She defies her hard-nosed but New Agey boss Abigail Exton-White in pursuing unassigned stories, including a slave labor conspiracy with possible connections to Guest (the book has no lack of subplots for her to bounce among). Surprisingly adept at handling bad guys, she arouses suspicions among the journalists. Who is she really? The novel turns on connections between Middle Kingdom and AI-equipped descendants of Bletchley Park’s wartime codebreakers. There will be blood as Guest remakes Slim’s acquaintance and corrupt government forces seek to shut down Middle Kingdom. As the great-granddaughter of a Jewish-born Polish intelligence officer who heroically destroyed evidence that Poland had broken the Enigma machine when Germany invaded his country, Slim has a vested interest in the drama. Journalist Porter has been compared to Mick Herron, among other top spy novelists, and Slim could have leaped from one of his Slough House novels with her freewheeling rejection of authority. But Porter never loses sight of her humanity and basic vulnerability; the reader feels her personal losses while rooting for her to overcome them.
Journalism and spycraft make for compelling bedfellows in Porter’s latest thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780802164438
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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