A head-spinning carom of a book, and a lot of fun amid all the blood and mayhem.
In which Richard Nixon meets a soon-to-be-dead woman in a “commie safe house,” and a strange game is afoot.
Ellroy always packs a tremendous amount of detail and a large dramatis personae into his potboilers, and this one is no exception. In his third novel to star Freddy Otash—criminal turned police officer, unredeemed dope addict and boozer, and all-around bull in a china shop—Ellroy turns in a loopy narrative full of real-life criminals, cops, and other figures from LA history, including Daryl Gates, Dalton Trumbo, H.R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself. The setup: the Cuban Missile Crisis has just passed, and an ambitious Robert Kennedy—“Ratfuck Bob Kennedy,” Otash calls him—has ordered up a Red Scare to divert attention from the news that Marilyn Monroe has died in a scenario with unpleasant hints of connection to both himself and his brother, the president. Enter “SHIT—the Sheriff’s Handpicked Intelligence Team” and Ellroy’s players are soon pulling dossiers on half the city, including Nixon, who, it soon develops, “is embroiled in a horrific sex snuff.” Said snuff involves two Communist Party stalwarts who ratted out Alger Hiss to Nixon and were dispatched following a failed shakedown, killed, perhaps, by four very bad brothers who “were big priest-killers and nun-rapers during the Spanish Civil War.” That war isn’t the only conflict to be evoked; one attorney on the make hopes to revive Mexico’s little-known Cristero Rebellion to wreak vengeance on the anti-clerical Reds. As if all that weren’t enough, Ellroy populates his yarn with the likes of a strung out Hugh Hefner, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (and an appearance by Charles Lindbergh himself), commies turned into John Birchers, and musical cameos by Quincy Jones and folk singer Judy Henske. The upshot? Kvetches Otash, “Richard Nixon still owes me thirty grand.”
A head-spinning carom of a book, and a lot of fun amid all the blood and mayhem.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9780525656814
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
