An overly complex tale that will elicit thrills and bewilderment in equal measure.
In the third installment of McCrone’s thriller series, an FBI agent struggles to foil a plot to commandeer the executive branch of the United States government.
In 2017, Special Agent Imogen Trager hears a press announcement that’s shocking but also predictable, given the massive political conspiracy that she thwarted in McCrone’s previous book, Faithless Elector (2016). President Diane Redmond has suddenly died, and in advance of an autopsy, the official line is that the cause was a heart attack. But Imogen and her boyfriend (and former college professor) Duncan Calder immediately suspect foul play. With his help, she was able to expose a vast scheme to rig a presidential election—one that ultimately resulted in the deaths of members of the Electoral College, among others. Now there aren’t many substantive leads for Imogen to follow, but there is one man that she knows is somehow involved—Frank Reed, who’s shadily connected to several fundraising political-action committees. He’s on the run from his co-conspirators and may be willing to help in exchange for protection. At the end of this exasperatingly complex plot, which even the narration concedes is a “Byzantine tangle,” is a mysterious villain known as the “Postman,” a nefarious businessman with an “ultimate vision” to establish a “nation ruled by kleptocrats, a democracy in name only.” In this latest series entry, Imogen remains a memorable protagonist—a “bookish” and “formal” intellectual who’s as tough as she is smart. In addition, the book has a highly cinematic quality to it, with plenty of action along the way. However, it’s tediously convoluted and breathlessly melodramatic, and readers will likely find that it doesn’t work very well as a stand-alone, apart from its predecessors. Readers will never be bored, but they may often find themselves lost—or in need of a spreadsheet to keep the deluge of details straight.
An overly complex tale that will elicit thrills and bewilderment in equal measure.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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