A hypnotically gripping conspiracy tale.
In this novel, a British man flees New York City after tragedy strikes and returns years later to seek some measure of closure only to find himself in danger.
In 1978, Charles Bateman works in Manhattan as a commercial architect but quickly absconds after a horrifying experience. While being robbed by a young woman brandishing a gun, a struggle ensued and she was accidentally shot with her own weapon. The police questioned Charles—while he wasn’t charged with a crime, they were bothered by the fact that there were powder burns on the woman’s lips and tongue. He returns to his native London but comes back to New York in 1996, now a university lecturer. He longs to discover more about Suzanne Finch, the drug-addled sex worker who died on that fateful night. Charles learns that Suzanne was once a singer and comes into possession of some of her recordings, hoping they will reveal clues about her troubled existence. But he finds himself in the crosshairs of danger, not only potentially a suspect in Suzanne’s suspicious death, but the target of a lurid conspiracy as well. Fabler adroitly composes a complex tale, brimful of both suspense and delicate psychological observations. In addition, he skillfully renders New York City in the ’70s in all its glamour and turpitude. Unfortunately, the author’s writing indulges in the occasional cliché—Charles has to “deal with his demons” and “lay certain ghosts to rest.” And sometimes the dialogue is so rhapsodic, it borders on the absurd. Consider this depiction of Suzanne by a bartender: “Suzanne was a butterfly. She never landed. You needed a net to catch her, and you knew that if you used a net, you might break her wings.” But despite these missteps, this is an intelligent novel, beguilingly sinister and disarmingly unpredictable.
A hypnotically gripping conspiracy tale.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780473638436
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Wild and Lawless Limited
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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