A bit slow to get going, but the heady concept, action, and danger pay dividends.
Debut author Finch’s international thriller features a young psychologist researching ancestral memory as a serial killer collects heads.
After Christian Yates completes his doctorate degree in psychology, he begins his career as an assistant professor. This career in academia is very short lived; Christian’s first lecture to undergraduates finds him quickly out of a job, as he has some views that are outside the mainstream. Specifically, he believes that humans have memories of their ancestors contained in their DNA. Although these memories are not readily available, they could be accessed, he posits, through some types of head trauma or the use of psychoactive substances, such as psychedelic mushrooms (hence the use of the latter in some Indigenous cultures). The undergraduates may lap this stuff up, but the senior faculty are simply not having it. All seems lost for Christian until he receives a mysterious job offer to work in Denmark: A company called Norkap Pharmaceuticals wants Christian’s help with their psychotropic drug research and is willing to offer him quite an impressive employment package. As the CEO, Hans Rasmussen, explains to Christian, his theories are “truer than you know.” Christian arrives in Denmark, where he comes under the wing of Hans’ nephew, Henrik. Henrik parties hard, and Christian does his best to keep up. He is also warned that Norkap may be engaged in unethical behavior. Meanwhile, a serial killer with a penchant for decapitation called “the Surgeon” is on the loose. It is believed that the Surgeon has killed eight people so far. The Surgeon is someone that Christian once met in the course of working with a patient who had “an unending flow of ancestral memories and languages that no human could have learned or faked.”
The premise of the story is a unique blend of speculative science and murder mystery—concepts like ancient memories do not typically come up in serial killer narratives. Still, while Christian’s students (the ones he has for one day, anyway) are certainly excited about his ideas, his expository lecturing can be dense. Though his speech gets one character worked up over the ethics of experimenting on worms, it throws an awful lot of information at the reader early on. This info dump, combined with a tragic event in Christian’s past and his difficulties with the patient who exhibited ancestral memories, make for slow-going early chapters. However, when the story moves to Denmark, the plot starts to jell, raising compelling questions (should Norkap be trusted?). When the action transfers to Greenland, Christian is informed almost immediately that he is in great danger—this is a thriller, after all, and peril becomes ever-present. Christian is later told, “We’re part of something far larger than ourselves, a saga that has unfolded over decades, leaving countless lives in ruins.” Serious stuff indeed—the reader can’t resist going forward to find out how it all connects.
A bit slow to get going, but the heady concept, action, and danger pay dividends.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9798856118710
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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