A laudable mystery that starts tangled and slowly unravels—with not one but two twists at the end.
A man wrongly convicted of murder feigns a mental disorder, giving him time in a psychiatric facility to concoct a scheme for clearing his name, in this debut thriller.
Medical student Dan Greenberg’s rotation at the Northwest Indiana Psychiatric Institution is a far cry from where he ends up—as a resident. When it’s clear that the evidence against him for his girlfriend Melinda Baum’s murder will guarantee Dan a prison sentence, he opts for convincing everyone that he’s a schizophrenic. He’s at the facility for a year before seeing a way out: college friend/medical student Sheri. Using secret correspondence, beginning with napkin notes written in crayon, Dan asks for Sheri’s help. Flashbacks, meanwhile, reveal the days leading up to Melinda’s murder. Dan’s assignment is to diagnose schizoaffective patient Catherine, whose ramblings about people in trouble at various hospitals stoke Dan’s curiosity. Catherine may even be predicting some of these, citing room numbers prior to the admissions. Cat scans of patients Catherine’s named show an irregularity, or an artifact, that’s oddly in an identical spot for each person. Viewing an autopsy, Dan quickly swipes an artifact (a small metal ball), which he then stashes. But soon his mail vanishes, someone seems to be tailing him, and people he’s confided in, including Melinda, turn up dead. Institutionalized Dan, Sheri, and fellow patient Jake formulate a plan of escape to prove Dan’s innocence. The story smoothly alternates between present day and past, generating suspense, for example, with the knowledge of Melinda’s imminent doom. The flashbacks eventually catch up and, on occasion, unnecessarily rehash the plot, like Dan telling his story (which readers already know) to cops, a lawyer, and his parents. But Benator piles on the mystery: Dan and Jake find a professor to examine and hopefully shed light on the metal ball and later track down the person(s) possibly responsible for Dan’s predicament. Characters are engaging all around, with Jake a standout. He may also have pled insane to avoid jail and yet never denies having killed four family members while on a cocktail of psychedelic drugs.
A laudable mystery that starts tangled and slowly unravels—with not one but two twists at the end.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944781-41-5
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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