A cautionary tale, more thriller than mystery, about the perils of getting what you wish for.
DCI Henry Johnstone returns to active duty to probe the murder of a socialite who seems to have died twice.
It’s strange enough for terrified tourists to see a large, silent man carrying a dead body in his arms lumber down Bournemouth’s beach to deposit his burden at the water’s edge. But it’s stranger still when the local police discover papers in a purse lashed to the victim’s arm that identify her as Faun Moran, a bright young thing who was killed and buried over a year ago after she and fellow partygoer Malcolm Everson drove off from a bash at the Belmonts’ posh estate and plummeted headlong into a nearby ravine. DI Harold Shelton, who investigated the crash, did such a slapdash job that DS Mickey Hitchens implores Johnstone to head up the newly opened inquiry. Though he’s still healing from his assault by the villain who kidnapped his niece in Old Sins (2021), Johnstone’s too intrigued by the case to turn it down. As Johnstone reinterviews witnesses who already gave testimony in the Everson crash, Adams opens another window into the backstory through an account by Vic, a shadowy character who traces Faun’s flight from her overbearing father into the arms of a man who’s far more dangerous. When Faun’s captor at last unveils himself, the question moves from who’s responsible for her death to whether and how Johnstone and Hitchens can bring the criminal to justice.
A cautionary tale, more thriller than mystery, about the perils of getting what you wish for.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-5013-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
Middling for an excellent series determined to drain the swamp of Washington state.
A late-night call from an old deputy of her late father’s sends a lame-duck sheriff hurtling into a disaster it will take her friend Det. Tracy Crosswhite to pull her out of.
Before his death, Buzz Almond served as sheriff of Klickitat County, Washington, for more than two decades. Now that his daughter, Jenny Almond, has lost her reelection bid, she’s waiting for the clock to tick down to her last day—but then she gets a call on her home phone that she can’t ignore. “I need to talk to Buzz,” says Anthony Alvarez, who’s been suffering from PTSD ever since his return from Vietnam. Since her father can’t, Jenny feels she has to respond herself, and her lightning-fast visit to Alvarez ends with him shot dead and her arrested for his murder. Tracy, a police academy classmate of Jenny’s, high-tails it up from Seattle along with her husband, attorney Dan O’Leary, who agrees to take on Jenny’s defense. It’s a challenging case because it’s obvious that the overwhelmed Jenny shot an unarmed Alvarez in the chest. She insists that she didn’t fire a second shot into his back, but the local police can’t find any evidence that anyone else was on the scene. Even if they could, they’d rather convict Jenny than follow up on her increasingly heated insistence that Alvarez, a person of interest in the disappearance of 15-year-old babysitter Jacquelyn Parker back in 1980, was killed because of new evidence he’d uncovered in that 45-year-old crime. As usual, Dugoni unfolds the complications in a steady stream in and out of the courtroom, and the denouement, though not exactly surprising, is highly satisfying.
Middling for an excellent series determined to drain the swamp of Washington state.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781662524752
Page Count: 415
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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