A generally impressive first outing from a talented writer.
A Texas patent lawyer gets embroiled in a murder trial in this debut novel.
The small city of Marshall, in eastern Texas, has for years been a favored venue for intellectual-property trials, the kind of cases in which the narrator, lawyer James Euchre, has thrived. In the book’s well-paced opening, Euchre is retained for a new patent lawsuit, his client has a violent in-court episode after an adverse ruling by a judge who’s been Euchre’s mentor, and police arrest the client after the judge is murdered. Euchre is the genre’s typically troubled, brooding quasi-underdog, a heavy drinker overshadowed by a famous lawyer father and struggling with his first murder trial. In this area he gets help and a little romance from one of the book’s rare women, a former prosecuting attorney. For welcome glints of humor, there’s Euchre’s investigator, a wisecracking gay woman known as The Leg for her place-kicking prowess. For trademark humor, intellectual-property lawyers lunch at a place called Central Perks, recalling the Friends coffee shop. Hartstone, who has written screenplays for film (Shock and Awe) and TV (The Good Fight), displays a sure hand with the pointed adversarial dialogue that fuels legal thrillers. He builds a nice level of tension in Euchre’s efforts to cope with an abrasive, evasive client and in the lawyer’s legal missteps and local feuds, even combining the two when Euchre goes after a man who once dated his wife. The courtroom scenes have some standout moments, but much of the action is elsewhere, in the Euchre team’s detective work. Through all this, Hartstone weaves two themes, of which one, about small towns and their secrets, was well worn in Harper Lee’s time and doesn’t add much heft here. The other concerns fathers and sons, which Hartstone sustains well through several relevant variations.
A generally impressive first outing from a talented writer.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54781-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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