A stark and engaging tour of a menacing world.
In this thriller about prison politics and power struggles, an incarcerated man tries to stay out of trouble.
Percy Croft is the second-biggest guy in Seamax Penitentiary, one of the “castles” treated with fear and reverence by the prison community. In general, castles stay out of tribal disputes; they don’t act as enforcers or fight one another. With only 16 months left to serve, Croft feels that the end of his term is in sight. But the only guy bigger than Croft has a personal vendetta against him. That would be Rook, currently held in solitary confinement. “I may have had something to do with that,” Croft admits. Rook’s getting out of the hole in three weeks, and Croft can’t stop thinking about the payback coming his way. His savior takes an unlikely form: Bread, a transfer from a state prison. Bread is well connected and becoming more influential by the day. He makes a deal with Croft. If Bread can say Croft is working with him, he’ll grease enough palms to make sure Rook doesn’t get out of solitary anytime soon. Croft takes the deal, but it comes with hidden costs. Bread’s not content with security or ease; he wants to be the prison’s drug kingpin. This puts him at odds with the current top dog and places Croft in a difficult position. Can he stay out of the internecine conflict that Bread has kicked up? Palmer’s crisp writing gives Croft a straightforward and often elegant narrative voice. Longing for freedom, Croft enumerates what he misses most: “Dark coffee…city rain sliding off a Morse jacket with a burgundy lining, snow in my headlights on a county two-lane.” At times, the author’s excellent prose betrays him: One action-packed description of an execution feels gorily indulgent. But Croft is a good companion and guide through the troubling world of Seamax. He feels that his size makes him stand out for the wrong reasons; he’s really just a guy with “antique notions.” Bread is a well-constructed villain, a ruthless scheme-weaver whose boldness strikes fear in the hearts of his adversaries, including Croft.
A stark and engaging tour of a menacing world.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73407-801-5
Page Count: 301
Publisher: JPF
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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