A suspenseful crime story with deft plotting and a resourceful, well-developed protagonist.
A New York City detective races against time to stop a terrorist attack in Venice, Italy, in Ceron’s thriller.
Although this assured thriller is the author’s first full-length novel, he introduced its protagonist Miles in a previous novella, Death of the Saltwater Blonde (2022). Miles Jordan—“Detective First Grade New York Police Department, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Officer, and Jamal’s Big & Tall Gold Star Customer”—is in Venice as part of a counterterrorism force partnering with the Italian military police. The mission: use captured sleeper agent Aarzam El-Hashem as bait to catch the elusive terrorist known as the Scorpion, assumed to be targeting the Israeli prime minister during the latter’s visit to the city in a few days. The task force’s plans go awry, and the arrogant, ambitious commander of the Venice Carabinieri, Col. Giuseppe Marino, blames Miles. However, the Scorpion sees Miles’ persistence and tendency to think outside the box as the real threats to him. Miles, who is Black, is about to be removed from the case by the American special agent in charge, a racist, “hardline good ol’ boy”; however, a clandestine meeting with a CIA operative opens new lines of inquiry and buys him more time. Ceron’s fast-paced, multilayered plot encompasses a meeting at the Roman Catholic Church archdiocese with an outspoken anti-Islam cardinal, a disturbing encounter with the leader of a shadowy organization of terrorist Catholic fanatics, and even a possible mole within the Carabinieri. The villains are a bit shallowly developed, but this is mitigated by the novel’s overall emotional resonance, particularly in the poignant tale of desperate father Nabeel Haddad, who unknowingly gets caught up in the lethal plot, and Miles’ burgeoning relationship with the haunted, Somalia-born Kamaria Uba of the Carabinieri.
A suspenseful crime story with deft plotting and a resourceful, well-developed protagonist.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 979-8986255415
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Gold Coast Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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