An expertly detailed, refreshingly quirky spin on the typical detective story.
Klingler offers a modern-day investigative thriller about a road trip gone awry.
Tommy Cuda has plans to drive the entirety of U.S. Route 66 in the “turbo-bronze metallic Plymouth Barracuda” that he inherited from his grandfather, which is all tuned up and ready to go. He leaves Chicago with “cash, a loose plan to reach the Pacific Ocean at some point, and no commitments to be anywhere” at any time. At a rest stop in Illinois, he meets a young woman with tarot cards; for $5, “Leni the Leviathan” offers to tell him his future. Tommy is intrigued, but before he can get his complete fortune, Leni runs away and hides in a restroom—because someone driving a Cadillac is apparently on her trail. Tommy offers Leni a ride to help her escape her pursuer; soon, she explains that she’s a college student and that her professor who raped her, Markus Corolla, is the person who’s after her. Leni gives Tommy directions to her friend Prof’s home in a small town near St. Louis. Prof is a hipster autodidact who loves high-tech devices. He allows Tommy and Leni to stay at his house while they figure out their next moves. It turns out that Leni has also been delivering boxes for a service run by Markus; her job is simple: deliver packages to or from Amazon lockers via an app called HappyBox. The boxes’ contents are a mystery and may be connected to illegal activity. Leni decides to hire Tommy as a private investigator, although he has no license for such things, and she does so for unclear reasons (“she never actually said why she needed a private eye”). Then Leni goes missing, leaving Tommy with only her phone.
As the plot unfolds, the narrative makes several unexpected diversions. For instance, Tommy, ever the technological skeptic, expresses his grim view of cellphones, noting that one’s “entire life” is being recorded “by an unseen entity.” He later plays guitar in a band, delivering a riveting version of Jimi Hendrix’s song “Fire” to a lively crowd at a bar called Toucan Sam’s, and he spins vinyl records in a special compartment in his Barracuda. He also goes to the gym with one of Prof’s friends, where he compares exercise equipment to Fender amplifiers, and Prof offers a lengthy description of his involvement with cryptocurrency. Although such bits slow the action, they create a memorable atmosphere in a tale that’s populated by offbeat characters. Tommy’s loose plan to help Leni certainly alters his equally loose plan to drive west, and he soon finds himself immersed in a world where he can not only show off his guitar chops, but also have conversations about such topics as the future of sex robots. He does all this while maintaining his upbeat personality and affection for jokes, such as one about how the word coward should mean “moving in the direction of a cow.” Meanwhile, the mystery plot features regular new developments as Tommy goes about “following the money” as an amateur PI.
An expertly detailed, refreshingly quirky spin on the typical detective story.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
