An action-packed but uneven thriller.
A lawyer rescues a victim in distress and gets drawn into the hunt for a serial rapist in this crime novel.
Attorney Jessie Martin pulls over to the side of the road while driving in Poughkeepsie, New York, when she spies a woman lying unconscious in the pouring rain. The woman, Lissie Sexton, survives—she’s a sex worker who was mercilessly beaten by a client she cannot adequately identify. Police detective Ebony Jones—a direct, “just the facts, ma’am” type of investigator—comes to believe that Lissie suffered at the hands of a dangerous serial rapist as similar victims are discovered. Unfortunately, Lissie disappears, and it turns out that she’s represented by Jeremy Kaplan, a shady lawyer, who insists on keeping her whereabouts unknown. Jessie has a tortured history with Jeremy, a despicable man who once tried to destroy her career. Yet she is now offered a job by him. A distraught Jessie mulls her thorny predicament: “Was she really considering crossing over to the dark side? To Jeremy Kaplan? The man who’d almost had her disbarred, who’d cost her the partnership at Curtis and McMann, her engagement to Kyle, and who’d threatened her life and Lily’s? Was she out of her freaking mind?” She ends up accepting the position against her better judgment. Now, Jones leans on Jessie to disclose Lissie’s whereabouts. But Jessie refuses, a decision that only increases the already existing tensions between her and Jones, her former best friend.
In this ambitious sequel, Millman certainly doesn’t skimp on the action—every page seems to reveal a new drama or explain an old one, and the tale’s pace never lags. The main plot is intelligently structured and entirely plausible. While it offers nothing literarily original, the story provides a thoughtful portrayal of the tension between the demands of defense attorneys and the needs of law enforcement. But the tale is written in such a hyperventilated style that it sometimes seems more comic than tragic. The backstory is so complex that it quickly becomes a burden—the book begins with an unwieldy freight of dramas that are difficult to unravel. Jessie is stalked by a psychotic killer; is in a state of perpetual struggle with her ex-fiance; and flounders in her current relationship with Hal Samuels, a district attorney, who has his own set of problems, both professional and personal. As the subplots multiply, the tale becomes increasingly overwrought. But the principal bar to readers’ enjoyment of what could be an entertaining crime drama is the author’s writing, which swings from melodramatic to bland. Consider this internal monologue by Jones: “This is why I became a public servant, she thought. Solving crimes and catching scumbags are cool, but saving a life’s the best.”
An action-packed but uneven thriller.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68512-082-5
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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