Sex, lies, and secrets turn deadly in this modern-day tale built on classic plot devices.
Provence is the stunning backdrop for this murder mystery, in which a much-anticipated vacation turns deadly and friends struggle to discover the killer in their midst.
Visiting the lush lavender fields and olive groves of the French countryside is a dream come true for Darcy, Jade, Vix, and Arabelle when Darcy's Grand-mère Séraphine invites them to stay at her chateau. The women have known each other for decades and are looking forward to their reunion. But not long after their arrival Séraphine is stabbed to death. Reeling from the horrific attack, the four friends are even more unsettled when they receive a follow request from an anonymous Instagram account entitled @imwatchingyou88. The feed contains photos of the women at the chateau and includes menacing messages: “You can’t hide,” and “I know what you did. You won’t get away with it.” In the tradition of a classic Agatha Christie locked-room mystery, everyone in the chateau is a suspect, and each of the women may have a motive unknown to the other three. At least three of them have serious financial issues and could benefit if they are included in Séraphine’s will. Goldis is in firm control of her plotting and stealthily employs the unreliable narrator trope with alternating first-person chapters told by Darcy, Jade, Vix, and Arabelle as well as Séraphine; the groundskeeper, Raph; and Séraphine’s housekeeper, Sylvie. They all have reasons for hiding their truths, but past traumas and secrets slowly come to light. A messy extramarital affair, a missing Van Gogh painting, and a Holocaust-era betrayal spin the plot toward shocking revelations that do not stop until the very last page.
Sex, lies, and secrets turn deadly in this modern-day tale built on classic plot devices.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781668013014
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Fans willing to accept a big reveal that’s only medium-sized will revel in a superior thriller.
A rookie fellow in forensic pathology discovers a secret that turns her into her own most riveting case study.
Sloan Hastings has always known that Raleigh dentist Dolly Hastings and orthodontist Todd Hastings aren’t her biological parents. But it’s not until she submits a DNA sample to an online site in support of her assigned research in investigative genealogy that she discovers how closely it matches the DNA of Nevada photographer Nora Davies Margolis, who’s active on genealogical sites. In fact, Sloan learns, she herself is almost certainly Charlotte Margolis, who disappeared from Cedar Creek along with her birth parents, newlyweds Preston and Annabelle Margolis, nearly 30 years ago. Following the DNA trail Sloan’s now made publicly available, Cedar Creek Sheriff Eric Stamos—whose father, Sheriff Sanford Stamos, was found dead under highly suspicious circumstances back in 1995—comes east to convince Sloan that the vanishing of her infant self and her parents was the reason Sandy Stamos was killed and the true details of his decease suppressed by the all-powerful Margolis clan; that both mysteries are tied to the case Sandy was investigating when he died—the apparent hit-and-run death of Margolis law firm partner Baker Jauncey; and that Sloan’s search for her birth parents would make her the perfect candidate to go undercover in the Margolis closet and root out its skeletons. Zigzagging mercilessly between past and present, Donlea keeps up the tension long after you’ve decided that it really doesn’t matter who killed Baker Jauncey and Sandy Stamos as long as Sloan learns the truth and comes out of this lethal maze intact.
Fans willing to accept a big reveal that’s only medium-sized will revel in a superior thriller.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781496727183
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A muscular, enigmatic, and devilishly smart read.
A methodical story about evil—its mystery and its toll—takes its murderous narrator past the brink of sanity.
Grayson Hale has committed murder, claiming the devil made him do it. What makes this first-person novel so chilling is that Grayson, an American graduate student in Edinburgh, sounds completely sane, the product of an emotionally neglectful San Diego home who has suffered from satanophobia, or a paralyzing fear that the Adversary is coming for him. His parents, detached heads of a living-room church, barely gave him the time of day as he grew up neurotic and terrified. Now, in Scotland, an enigmatic stranger wants him to ghostwrite a book about the devil. The stranger, who goes by D.B., believes his countrymen no longer have a healthy fear and respect for Satan. Grayson really needs the money if he's going to pursue his doctorate. Of course, he has no idea what he’s getting into. Lean and propulsive, this dissection of evil marches forward with a deadly logic and sleight of hand, with occasional gaps filled in by an enterprising journalist and a Scottish information commissioner. The key is that we feel for Grayson as he leads us up to the brink of his terrible deed. The characters surrounding him, from his ghoulish family to his annoying roommate to his eventual victim, come to life on the page, all part of Grayson’s living nightmare. His bouts of satanophobia are characterized by visits from swarms of yellow-eyed fiends who crowd the aisle of the bus he rides. All the while he undergoes a crisis of faith; a one-time theological prodigy, he falls away from the calling even as its imagery fills his consciousness. It’s a patient pursuit and a patient book, one that builds without the reader quite realizing it. It blurs the line between mental illness and something less definable, more supernatural and sinister.
A muscular, enigmatic, and devilishly smart read.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9902-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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