A pleasure for Grisham fans and an undemanding addition to the beach bag.
A tempest is bearing down, and murder most foul is afoot in Grisham’s latest whodunit.
Call it a metamystery: Grisham, prolific producer of courtroom thrillers, moves the action to a Florida resort island populated by mystery writers. In the wake of a ravaging hurricane, one of them turns up dead—a nice, affable fellow named Nelson Kerr, a former trial lawyer who “ratted out a client, a defense contractor who was illegally selling high-tech military stuff to the Iranians and North Koreans.” It’s not hard to understand that the client might want Kerr dead. But then, so would others whom Kerr has written about, including money launderers and—well, let’s just say other entrepreneurs who wouldn’t like their activities to be described in any detail. Enter bookstore owner Bruce Cable, friend, drinking buddy, and sometime editor and adviser of Kerr and other members of Camino Island’s literary crowd, including “an ex-con who’d served time in a federal pen for sins that were still vague.” Cable is perhaps Grisham’s least sympathetic hero; he drinks night and day, sleeps around, and has few apparent scruples. At least he’s not a lawyer. Neither is he a cop, though he’s quicker on the scene than the island’s homicide investigator—“I didn’t know we had a homicide guy,” Bruce allows, since murder is rare in these parts. That leaves it to him, an intern, a girlfriend, and assorted other players to piece together what happened to the unfortunate Mr. Kerr, who, it must be said, is dispatched in a way nicely in keeping with Floridian lifestyles. Grisham’s tale unfolds at a leisurely pace, never breaking into a sweat, and if the bad guys seem a touch too familiar, the rest of the cast make a varied and believable lot, and some might even be fun to ride out a storm with, at least if they're unarmed.
A pleasure for Grisham fans and an undemanding addition to the beach bag.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54593-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.
Two old friends, relationship forged in fire and trauma, find themselves at the center of a murder mystery.
Frida Nilsen and Gabriel Miller are staying at the Ara, a comfortable desert hotel in Escalante, Utah, trying to decide whether both of them are ready to participate in a documentary about some mysterious point in their shared past. Late at night, Frida is standing on their suite’s private patio, smoking, when she overhears a fight between wealthy tabloid tycoon William Brenner and his young, glamorous wife, Sabrina. The next day, Sabrina’s body is found, her head caved in. When Frida tells the cops about the couple’s argument, William is arrested, but hours later, he returns to the Ara and seems to have both Frida and Gabriel in his sights. It turns out he recognizes Gabriel from a scandal 10 years prior, when his wife, Annie, went missing and was then discovered dead. Gabriel was never charged in her death, but papers like William’s had a field day stalking him and posting articles and photos that suggested his guilt. But unbeknownst even to William Brenner, Frida and Gabriel share a bond that’s deeper and darker than Annie’s death. They were born into a cult run by a charismatic dirtbag named Émile. Though they aren’t related by blood, this shared childhood and teenage trauma made them as close as siblings, and when they escaped, they had only each other. While Frida remains the narrator, chapters alternate back and forth between the present day and the past, offering a slow reveal from their childhood to their escape from the cult and the difficult years of adjusting to the real world. Michallon does incredible work building both characters and tension; Frida’s self-awareness and vulnerability clash with her strength and even hardness, but that’s what trauma has wrought. As Michallon poignantly writes, “This is who we are.…We start over together. Again. And again.”
The novel offers mystery aplenty, but at its core, there is a deep and compassionate humanity.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593802762
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Warning: This doesn’t actually change all that much.
Driven by one of her trademark premonitions come horrifyingly true, Julia Pritzker leaves her adopted home in Tuscany to return to her Pennsylvania roots.
No sooner has Julia, seized by a sudden urge to phone her best friend, Courtney Horan, had a shattering vision than Courtney, still on the line, discovers the body of her grandmother, Kay Patterson, shot to death in her home in rural Pennsylvania. Naturally, Julia drops everything and books a flight to Courtney’s side. Who on earth would want to kill a Black octogenarian widely loved for her kindness and charity? Once the police find the presumed murder weapon—a ghost gun produced by a 3D printer—in the woods outside Kay’s house, they suspect Courtney, and Julia suspects the police. When homicide detective William Kowalski arrests Courtney, Julia decides his case is so weak that he must be racist or corrupt rather than just stupid; the only question is how far in the department the rot has spread. Back in Italy, there’s another emergency: Julia’s husband, library director Gianluca Moretti, is suspected of child abuse when their 3-year-old daughter, Leni, lapses into a mysterious grief and begs Julia to come back. But Julia, who’s already begun to suspect that Leni may have inherited some of her psychic powers, refuses and resolves to stay the course. Readers impatient with the endless wind-down of the mystery of Kay’s murder, which turns out to be the tip of a vast terrorist conspiracy, will be relieved to learn that the accusations against Gianluca are wrapped up with all due haste. The result is an ambitious whodunit, a less satisfying cold case, and a domestic drama so familiar it’s practically heartwarming.
Warning: This doesn’t actually change all that much.Pub Date: July 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538770030
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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