This one is great stuff for the crime buff.
A dark thriller by the author of The Dirty South (2020), featuring bloodthirsty veterans of the Balkan wars and occasional appearances by private detective Charlie Parker and his late daughter, Jennifer.
An aging Dutch criminal and his nephew are murdered in their safe house, and their blood drips through a ceiling and the floor below. The FBI investigates the death of a U.S. government employee named Armitage, who had a murky connection to Serbian gangster Zivco Ilić, and it may be best to chalk it up to suicide. The Serbian brothers Radovan and Spiridon Vuksan smuggle people across borders, several of whom committed mass murder during the Balkan wars—not unlike their late cousin Buha, a Serb who liked to crucify Muslims and Croats. Meanwhile, the “unusual private investigator named Charlie Parker” plays a background role, letting his friends Louis, Angel, and the Fulci brothers carry the story for the good guys. That’s a relative term: If matronly Mrs. Bondarchuk had adopted the Fulci brothers in Queens, “even the rats would have moved out.” One of them is dumb as a rock, and the other is dumb as two rocks. And of Louis: “There are plagues that have killed fewer people.” Yet Parker has had a salutary effect on his friends, saving them from years behind bars. “Who knew that a conscience could be contagious?” Jennifer communes with Louis in his dreams, suggesting that he need not fear the afterlife. But the prize for best character is Zorya, an evil, bent-over old woman often mistaken for a teenager and resembling “a malformed mannequin,” her skin “like a piece of fruit in the process of decay.” The overall plot isn’t obvious, although criminals seem to be tainting Serbia’s chances of joining the European Union. But author Connolly’s descriptions are as engaging as his characters. “Death was an old woman who slept in hell.” A man’s smile “was by now under severe strain, like a bridge about to collapse.”
This one is great stuff for the crime buff.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9821-7697-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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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