A flawed but enjoyable thriller that keeps the pages turning until the very end.
A detective’s previous case makes him—and his loved ones—targets of a psychopathic tribal cult leader in Askew’s thriller.
This sequel to 2023’s Alaska Deadly continues the adventures of Memphis-based private investigator Race Warren. Home in Tennessee after saving a man’s life in Alaska—the man, former police officer Ron Billings, is alive but in a coma in a Memphis hospital—Warren realizes the case is far from closed when assassins attempt to kill not only the hospitalized Billings but an anthropologist named Kate Hartley as well. Recognizing that the murder attempts are connected to a whalebone knife-wielding Inuit tribal shaman bent on revenge for a past alleged desecration, Warren heads back to Alaska to stop the elusive killer once and for all. Things get complicated when Warren’s love interest, flight nurse Renae Allen, is abducted by the bad guys. Thriller fans will find a lot to like here: The action is virtually nonstop from the first page to the last, with an abundance of car chases, shootouts, fight scenes, and—not surprisingly—numerous accompanying sequences set in various hospitals. The overall intensity is noteworthy as well; the level of looming physical danger is palpable throughout as Warren and friends are hunted by ruthless cultists and Russian thugs (“Warren ducked back behind the car as rounds struck overhead, raising a din of sounds, the clanging of metal and whining of ricochets, puncturing the raised trunk lid and pockmarking the top of the fender”). The author also keeps the emotional and psychological tension high by focusing on Warren’s connections with others and his guilt over being the reason their lives are in danger. There are minor issues with the story, however: The narrative relies too heavily on dialogue, which noticeably slows down the momentum in places, and the novel’s climactic conclusion is far too predictable and features an outdated trope that may leave readers rolling their eyes.
A flawed but enjoyable thriller that keeps the pages turning until the very end.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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