An effective page-turner about a killer’s new identity and a prisoner’s long-simmering plot.
A falsely accused reporter sentenced to a chain gang vows revenge on the man who really committed the crime.
In this tense fiction debut from Hutchinson (Out of the Cults and Into the Church, 2012, etc.), Ed Bowman, after 10 years working as a typesetter and filler writer for the Casey Clarion in Hannigan, Virginia, seizes a chance to advance his career, make his wife, Sarah, proud, and confound the disapproval of his mother-in-law. Sue Davis, the much-loved daughter of the prison warden of the State Penitentiary, has been brutally murdered. Bowman wins a chance to cover the trial in Richmond alongside writers at much bigger papers like the Richmond Times-Dispatch. When he overhears and reports a confidential—and damning—conversation between the defense attorneys of the accused man, Gunther Buford, Bowman’s future at the paper seems assured. But Buford, whose “ungovernable temper evoked fear even in his closest friends,” breaks out of jail, intent on murdering Bowman for writing the story that sealed his fate. In the ensuing violence, Sarah is killed instead of the reporter. Buford flees, and, in an ironic twist, Bowman finds himself arrested and charged with the murder of his beloved wife. While Bowman is suffering on a chain gang, Buford, under the fake name of Gus Mooreland, rises in the ranks of the Western Pacific Railroad, unaware that the reporter he sought to kill remains alive and intent on revenge. Hutchinson’s dual narrative of the experiences of these men is expertly contrived, and her characters tend to be enjoyable stereotypes (for instance, early on, Bowman’s “dream was to work his way up to Investigative Journalist at the prestigious newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch”). The prose itself can sometimes descend into clichés (“one fell swoop,” for example, and “moment of truth” are used without irony). But the fast-paced core story is served up with a good deal of dramatic energy, and the novel’s concluding scenes are genuinely gripping as Bowman slowly and uncertainly orchestrates his revenge on the man who ruined his life.
An effective page-turner about a killer’s new identity and a prisoner’s long-simmering plot.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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