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
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
