Another terrific addition to this winning medical thriller series starring an indefatigable physician.
An orthopedic surgeon and amateur sleuth investigates the mysterious deaths of a succession of nursing home residents.
Prolific Houston author Bishop continues his charming, addictively suspenseful mystery series with this fourth volume, which finds Dr. Jim Bob Brady uncovering evidence of lethal malpractice at a care facility. It has become a common practice for Pleasant View Nursing Home to refer its most infirm patients to University Hospital for evaluation, with most in their final days and too ill to survive the transfer. The latest patients are two aging women with Alzheimer’s disease referred to Brady by his colleague Dr. James Morgenstern. But upon examination, Brady discovers questionable cognitive abilities and a strange bone trauma. Brady’s sense of justice is alerted that something is indeed awry. The situation becomes especially dire when one woman dies inexplicably on the operating table, followed by other deaths that confound and horrify Brady and his colleagues. This becomes a distressing pattern, and after finding curious autopsy details on both the bodies and the physiology of the brains, Brady goes to the medical director at Pleasant View Nursing Home, Dr. Ted Frazier, for answers. In true form, Brady then digs deeper into the mystery by discreetly investigating the facility and its controversial, experimental brain tissue nerve regenerative treatments. Brady’s adventures in medical justice are reliably co-helmed by his longtime wife of 27 years, Mary Louise. As in previous volumes, she truly grounds her husband both emotionally and psychologically, guiding him toward resolutions he may not have embraced on his own. Key to Bishop’s series success is consistency in narrative technique, readable prose, and strong plotting. As the story progresses and Brady draws closer to the unethical inner machinations of the nursing home, the author is mindful to explain the often intriguing medical terminology in plain speech, together with the various challenges to contemporary medical ethics, ensuring that lay readers don’t get lost in the translation. Brady is at his investigatory best in this entry, even when his life hangs in the balance in the tale’s thrilling showdown, which pits him against the misguided and murderous culprit behind the baffling deaths.
Another terrific addition to this winning medical thriller series starring an indefatigable physician.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73425-116-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Mantid Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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
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