A stylish, stuffed-to-the-gills crime novella.
Stolen cash attracts a rogues’ gallery in Kushnir’s crime novella.
John is the pastor at the nearly bankrupt Church of St. Jude, and he isn’t sure how he’s going to continue to feed the eight orphans who reside in the basement. Little does he know the answer to his prayers is hurtling toward him—$5 million in cash—propelled by a series of compounding criminal acts. The money comes from the all-powerful state senator Red, who seems to think the best way to help the poor is to cut their social services while enriching himself with corporate kickbacks. When his trophy wife, Mila, runs off with the loot to start a new life on a tropical island, Red sends his number one goon, Vinnie, to retrieve her and the boodle. (Vinnie, who has no problem using a rusty old spoon to extort his victims, shares wisdom like “Debts are like kids. If you don’t raise ’em right on time, they grow up and start biting you in the throat.”) By the time Vinnie catches up with Mila, the money has already been stolen by a pair of hapless stick-up artists, and soon many other people are after it, including a pair of corrupt cops, a triad assassin, a sword-bearing nun, a seasoned fixer, and a poisoner with impeccable aesthetic taste. (“Suffering should be poetic, like Dostoevsky,” opines the poisoner. “Blood on the floor ain’t tragedy—it’s bad interior design.”) Though not formatted like a screenplay, the narrative is presented cinematically, complete with voice-over narration, camera directions, references to Guy Ritchie films, and vivid present-tense descriptions, like this one of John’s church: “The facade is peeling like an old boxer’s skin after a thousand losses. Inside—dampness soaking everything, from the pews to the Bible. Plastic angels from Walmart stand on the altar, their wings yellowed with age.” Fans of crime-centric graphic novels may particularly enjoy this tale, which reads like several issues of a comic book boiled down to 60 pages of crackling prose.
A stylish, stuffed-to-the-gills crime novella.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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