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THE PRESIDENT’S WIDOW

An engrossing legal mystery with an unforgettable villain.

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A Memphis, Tennessee, attorney defends the first lady of the United States, who’s facing charges of murdering her spouse in Bates’ thriller.

Maddie Kincade may be a “small-time country lawyer,” but her latest case is in Washington, D.C. Jana Sinclair, her client, is a friend whom Maddie’s parents took in as a 15-year-old when her mom was institutionalized. She also happens to now be the first lady, and she’s accused of killing her husband, President Graham Sinclair. The evidence is damning: Secret Service agent Jack McCaffrey found Jana holding a bloody dagger in the Lincoln bedroom; the couple regularly fought; and she even provided authorities with a full, signed confession. For support, Maddie brings her mentor, professor Ollie Dodd, and her whip-smart assistant, Carly Gibbs. Unfortunately, Ollie is displaying signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and although he discovers evidence that could turn the case in Maddie’s favor, he quickly forgets it. Although Jack believes the first lady is guilty, he’s quite taken with her attorney; it’s a mutual feeling, and romance quickly becomes a possibility. Meanwhile, in Texas, a man named Hoyt Tolliver has a deep-rooted animosity toward Maddie. When he hears that she’s in Washington, he travels there on a murderous mission. This novel is relatively lengthy at more than 475 pages, but it moves at a steady clip. Bates keeps his scenes and details concise, which generally benefits the story and characters; the subtle romantic relationship between Maddie and Jack is particularly notable. The courtroom scenes, on the other hand, suffer a bit, as they’re too short for much intensity or intrigue to develop. Moreover, the subplot involving Tolliver occasionally sidelines the main murder plot, particularly in the final act. That said, Tolliver’s backstory and motivation are truly disturbing, and he’s a frightening, formidable menace throughout. There are also several twists in Maddie’s case that may surprise even the most savvy readers.

An engrossing legal mystery with an unforgettable villain.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-69173-197-8

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Self

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2020

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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NONE OF THIS IS TRUE

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.

On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.

It's hard to read but hard to look away from.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023

ISBN: 9781982179007

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023

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