An action-packed topical read that is sometimes overly complicated.
Fiction borrows heavily from fact in this stark action novel built around Mexico’s drug war as it spills into the U.S.
Grant Meredith is the stoic, stubborn hero of his own privatized effort to take down a cartel kingpin. Trouble is, the kingpin—who has a grudge against Meredith to begin with—is the father of the president of Mexico, a stature that protects him with a complicated sociopolitical reality that includes the police, judiciary and armed forces. Meredith has an arsenal of his own, however, including his multinational security company, BlackRock. High-caliber havoc ensues. The subtitle of the book sums it up: Murder or Self Defense on the Mexican Border. Or both murder and self-defense, as bullets fly north and south in a sprawling story that has henchmen beheaded, padrones shot in the face and sharpshooters picked off by other sharpshooters. The gist of the tale is painfully realistic, ripped quite literally from the headlines (the author acknowledges this in an appendix of news stories). Merriman—a military veteran who lives in Arizona and Colorado—has done his homework. For example, one passage describes in concise fashion the vast illicit-drug economy that supports people from all walks of life: “Farmers, importers, purchasing agents, negotiators, shippers, financial managers, money launderers, accountants, lawyers, intelligence agents, communications specialists, car thieves, enforcers, spotters, distribution agents, smugglers and street sellers.” That’s what Meredith is up against. While the factual basis of the narrative is compelling, the central drama between Meredith and his nemesis is lost sometimes in an excessive character count and a tangled plot. There’s also the fact that Meredith is essentially a soldier of fortune, a quality that will hinder his likeability for some readers—BlackRock being so reminiscent of Blackwater USA, the military contractor that became so controversial in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The story has a neat closing twist, however, and Meredith’s alliance with a beautiful assassin is an inspired idea.
An action-packed topical read that is sometimes overly complicated.Pub Date: June 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470002244
Page Count: 342
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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