A dark, provocative tale of crowdfunded violence that stretches the notion of revenge to its limits.
In Epperson’s thriller, a small-town police deputy and an FBI agent match wits with the mastermind behind a lethal website.
The urge to get even runs like a thread through popular culture: Creators who successfully harness that primal drive in their fiction have often built successful careers around it, such as Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino. However, the devil lies in revenge’s details, as author Epperson suggests in this technothriller, which is built around a simple yet hair-raising premise. On the popular and highly illegal KillStarter website, people can crowdfund and contract killings-for-hire at the click of a button: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, with a high-tech twist. Users nominate potential targets, such as a drunken, bullying British lawyer or a racist, abusive American marketing consultant, and the murders are carried out, quickly and clinically, in return for bitcoin. For KillStarter’s creator—who, fittingly, remains anonymous for most of the book—the rewards lie in serving what they see as “the unseen hand shaping chaos, the mind orchestrating the unthinkable.” However, the game threatens to come undone after a viral frenzy breaks out around the nomination of a predatory Hollywood dealmaker, D’Wayne Robinson, who wastes no time barricading himself at his cliffside California home. The high-profile situation threatens to tear KillStarter’s tightly cordoned world apart. Monterey County Sheriff’s Deputy Lee Mann and FBI agent Miranda Walker have been investigating a string of murders related to the website and satisfying a public that loves KillStarter’s creator isn’t on their agenda. As Mann declares: “This isn't about liking him; It’s about upholding the system.”
Epperson does an artful job of navigating moral gray areas as the chase ratchets up and Robinson’s potential assassins, who continue zeroing in on their target, are revealed. If the book has a weakness, it’s the relative lack of character development that Mann, Walker, and their colleagues in law enforcement receive. Instead, Epperson sketches them out in broad strokes, as regular Joes and Janes trying to do the right thing. Aside from Mann’s grief over the loss of his wife to cancer and his fiery, if somewhat predictable, “situationship” with Miranda, readers get few glimpses into these characters’ emotional worlds. Similarly, Mann’s computer-expert sidekick, Moss Pendleton, comes across mainly as a relentlessly chipper techie who’s a fan of cinnamon pastries. It’s a disparity that stands in sharp contrast to the villains, whose feral desires for control “over life and death in a world gone rotten” are amply and chillingly detailed. That said, many cyberthriller devotees may see this imbalance as more of a feature than a bug, especially in light of the ambiguity that Epperson weaves around the KillStarter architect’s destiny. This volume could provide a solid foundation for a franchise to explore the moral issues that the author raises so effectively. As it is, it offers readers a rollercoaster ride that brings to mind the chaos of an ever-changing political climate.
A dark, provocative tale of crowdfunded violence that stretches the notion of revenge to its limits.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2025
ISBN: 9798232816827
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© 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.
