A lack of clear and consistent narration means the story gets lost in this overstuffed mystery.
The members of a drama club come together in the face of tragedy, unaware they could be the victims of an ongoing fraud.
The Fairway Players are a close-knit drama group in a small town outside London, socially centered around the club's founders, the Haywards and their children. Plans for their upcoming production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons are upended when Martin Hayward, the patriarch of the family and leader of the drama group, announces that his 2-year-old granddaughter, Poppy, has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. An experimental treatment from the U.S. has shown promise but requires the family to raise $350,000. The Fairway Players immediately begin fundraising, but as the money comes in, it seems that the Haywards might be using it for costs unassociated with Poppy's care. At the same time, the Haywards' doctor, Tish Bhatoa, is applying more and more pressure on the family, demanding high payments into her own personal account, which she claims to be using to pay for the medicine from the U.S. A new member of the Fairway Players with a personal history with Tish starts asking questions—about Poppy's condition, the Haywards' past, and Tish's intentions—that could threaten the entire operation, be it real or fraudulent. None of this, however, is told in narrative form. Instead, Hallett introduces the story via Femi and Charlotte, two law students who are reviewing all the case documentation ahead of an appeal in what became a murder case. Emails, newspaper clippings, text exchanges, and handwritten notes are used to lay out the communications between the people in the case, and some characters are only seen through mentions in the emails and texts of others. Femi and Charlotte act as guides for the reader, checking in and sorting through what has taken place every so often. The result is a confusing mix of overlapping half conversations and unconvincing synthesis that attempts to tie together too many threads rather than an engaging mystery.
A lack of clear and consistent narration means the story gets lost in this overstuffed mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-8745-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.
Two old friends, relationship forged in fire and trauma, find themselves at the center of a murder mystery.
Frida Nilsen and Gabriel Miller are staying at the Ara, a comfortable desert hotel in Escalante, Utah, trying to decide whether both of them are ready to participate in a documentary about some mysterious point in their shared past. Late at night, Frida is standing on their suite’s private patio, smoking, when she overhears a fight between wealthy tabloid tycoon William Brenner and his young, glamorous wife, Sabrina. The next day, Sabrina’s body is found, her head caved in. When Frida tells the cops about the couple’s argument, William is arrested, but hours later, he returns to the Ara and seems to have both Frida and Gabriel in his sights. It turns out he recognizes Gabriel from a scandal 10 years prior, when his wife, Annie, went missing and was then discovered dead. Gabriel was never charged in her death, but papers like William’s had a field day stalking him and posting articles and photos that suggested his guilt. But unbeknownst even to William Brenner, Frida and Gabriel share a bond that’s deeper and darker than Annie’s death. They were born into a cult run by a charismatic dirtbag named Émile. Though they aren’t related by blood, this shared childhood and teenage trauma made them as close as siblings, and when they escaped, they had only each other. While Frida remains the narrator, chapters alternate back and forth between the present day and the past, offering a slow reveal from their childhood to their escape from the cult and the difficult years of adjusting to the real world. Michallon does incredible work building both characters and tension; Frida’s self-awareness and vulnerability clash with her strength and even hardness, but that’s what trauma has wrought. As Michallon poignantly writes, “This is who we are.…We start over together. Again. And again.”
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593802762
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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