A thoughtfully rendered combination of crime thriller and emotional drama.
In Roberts’ legal drama, a cybersecurity expert blackmails his boss to get a promotion in a reckless move that lands him in a world of trouble.
Ted McCord works as a cybersecurity expert at River City Trust in Pittsburgh, desperately endeavoring to save enough money to buy a house for his wife Charlotte and their 5-year-old daughter Kelsey. Inadvertently, he stumbles upon a plot at work that involves his superiors, Ben Keene and Bob Thornton, to embezzle millions of dollars from the company and flee the country. Instead of reporting the conspiracy, Ted blackmails Ben into giving him a hotly contested promotion. His plan backfires, however, when Ben and Bob make it seem as if he’s the one embezzling money into a bank account established under his daughter’s name. Ted is fired and faces both criminal and civil charges, a terrifying predicament powerfully depicted by the author. The “house of lies” he’s built completely collapses—he needed the money from the promotion so badly because he inherited his father’s ranch in Montana, which was in financial arrears; he lied and told Charlotte that his brother, Jesse, was the owner, fearing that, if she knew the truth, she’d push to move there. In addition to delivering thrilling legal drama, the author sensitively chronicles the emotional tension that builds between Ted and Charlotte; she is devastated not only by his legal jeopardy and their newfound financial distress, but also by his profound dishonesty. (“I don’t have to start anything with you,” she spits when Ted attempts a reconciliation. “Not until I’m ready. Maybe not ever. Definitely not now.”) She is the most complex and fully satisfying character in the novel, torn between standing by a man she loves but does not trust and starting over with a new partner, Danny Manella, a man she considers honest. Roberts resists any temptation to offer moral platitudes or cheerfully neat resolutions—as in real life, all of the biggest decisions are fraught with compromises. This is a deeply intelligent work and, unlike its protagonist, a refreshingly honest one, too.
A thoughtfully rendered combination of crime thriller and emotional drama.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781645387671
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Ten16 Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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