A tense paranormal tale with an unusual, if sometimes-disjointed, narrative structure.
A retired priest, a group of young ghost hunters, and a pair of twins with supernatural powers become entangled in a demon’s revenge plot in Faherty’s supernatural thriller.
Asmodeus, known as the prince of demons, pledged its vengeance on the Rev. Leo Bonaventura five decades ago, and has come to Earth to claim its prize. The story is told over the course of a half-century, starting with the inciting incident—in which Bonaventura exorcised Asmodeus from the body of a 12-year-old boy in Guatemala—and moving forward. It jumps ahead a decade with each chapter and visiting locales around the world to show how various characters—including ghost hunters in Hastings Mills, New York, and feared Ohio twin sisters Claudia and Shari, who have very unusual abilities—arrive at the same place with the same goal of eradicating the demon. Mysterious, disturbing events ramp up over time, from spontaneous suicides and unexplained murders to a student séance gone awry and bizarre weather events, adding to a sense of growing chaos. The prose is engaging and suspenseful throughout, and the descriptions, particularly of scenes of demonic possession, are often vivid: “Dazzling bursts of white light exploded from the rafters. Everywhere they appeared, flames flickered to life across the aged wood. The townspeople tumbled over, their eyes burned away. Swarms of beetles emerged from the sockets and skittered across the floor.” Amid such fireworks, the character relationships also feel convincing. However, the offbeat chronology and shifting third-person character perspectives sometimes make the story difficult to follow. Along the way, the narrative strongly addresses themes of guilt and how it relates to religion; for example, one major character, also a priest, is an abuser of young children, and the work disturbingly delves into his thought process: “Ain’t Christianity the best? his subconscious whispered, while he mentally recited the Hail Mary. Defile your soul for what, the hundredth time? Two hundredth? But say a few imaginary invocations and all is forgiven. You’re a clean slate again.”
A tense paranormal tale with an unusual, if sometimes-disjointed, narrative structure.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-78758-593-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.
Murder disrupts the filming of—what else?—The Word Is Murder, based on the first novel starring author Horowitz and his sometime partner, ex-copper Daniel Hawthorne.
With commendably dramatic timing, gofer Izzy Mays bursts into the middle of a pivotal shot on location at The Stade in Hastings to announce that Hawthorne’s been murdered. Of course, what she means (though Horowitz takes his time clarifying this ambiguity) is that David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, has been fatally stabbed in the neck. Suspicion falls on James Aubrey, the agent Caine had just fired; Izzy, because Caine had caused her to be fired, too, though he ended up making his exit first; Ralph Seymour, the washed-up actor who’d returned from New Zealand to play Horowitz opposite Caine, his mortal enemy; and producer Teresa de León, who’s abruptly lost an important source of funding for the project; director Cy Truman; and screenwriter Shanika Harris, because why not? After Hawthorne builds meticulous hypothetical cases against several of these suspects, provoking Teresa’s apt rejoinder, “All those questions in the script and now you’re asking them for real,” he responds to Horowitz’s theory that he may have been the intended target after all by sharing a story from his early days as a private investigator in what ends up looking like the most elaborately extended red herring in the history of detective fiction. The two plots, past and present—or, to be more precise, past and present-day-adaptation-of-a-story-from-the-less-distant-past, are eventually woven together in ways only Horowitz’s most devoted fans will celebrate.
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780063305748
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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