A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.
In this thriller, a wealthy American businessman suspected of murder goes on the run with contract killers at his heels.
Joe Savage is one of the richest men in the United States. As CEO of Omnicon Investments, he lives and works in New York City, with homes in various states and a chateau on the French Riviera. Best of all, he and his beautiful wife, Betty, live a happy life with their 4-year-old son, Mark. But this all comes crashing down one day when Joe awakens in a strange apartment with a body in the bedroom. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. Convinced the police won’t buy that, Joe flees the crime scene. New York City Police Department detective Thomas Bone takes the murder case, with plenty of evidence pointing to a certain CEO. It must be a frame-up, but Joe has nowhere to turn for help. Betty and Mark are his only family, and she and Joe’s friend Peter Turnbull, Omnicon’s finance director, insist the entrepreneur turn himself in and take a guilty plea. Joe refuses to cop to something he didn’t do and instead sets out to prove his innocence. As Bone and New York’s finest comb the city, Joe keeps his head down, trying on disguises and even a new identity. But the authorities aren’t the only ones after him. For some reason, professional killers are gunning for him as well, and they tend to shoot first with nary a warning. Joe fights to stay alive and out of handcuffs long enough to clear his name.
Obomeghie’s novel brims with suspense. Though readers know right away who’s responsible for the murder and the motive, the narrative rolls out surprises, including startling deaths and specifics about the hit men. There’s plenty of action, too. Joe gets involved in foot and car chases, most of the time with assassins packing guns and lots of bullets. The author layers the story with painstaking details about Joe’s opulent lifestyle, a glaring contrast to the protagonist’s grim existence on the streets. He trades in his $3,000 Armani suit for a pair of sneakers, and his stay at a cheap hotel with “dusty, papered walls done in floral patterns” is worlds away from his New York home with million-dollar artworks adorning the walls. Joe will surely earn readers’ sympathy, as he suffers from depression and recurring nightmares from his yearlong captivity in a Viet Cong prison in Vietnam. And Joe’s nemesis Bone, though a smart and capable detective, isn’t the easiest guy to like, too often resorting to bloodshed. Despite all the gunfire, the author keeps the story’s violent scenes in check, even spotlighting the unexpected fallout. For example, readers may cheer when Joe successfully evades armed men, but innocent bystanders aren’t so lucky. Most descriptions, meanwhile, sound like snazzy one-liners, from on-the-lam Joe’s “walking around New York with a face he couldn’t afford” to a cigarette-smoking cop’s “presently ignoring the Surgeon General’s warning.” The story culminates in a gratifying denouement chock-full of resolution.
A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9913830-1-6
Page Count: 492
Publisher: Elliott and Dylan Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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