Razor-sharp dialogue, a tautly controlled pace and enough homicides for a miniseries. What more could fans want?
Despite its inaccurate, generic and dumb title—what’s next, Murder Prey?—Lucas Davenport’s 20th case is one of his best.
“We don’t hurt anyone,” Lyle Mack tells his brother Joe and their biker buddies Mikey Haines and Shooter Chapman as he conducts one last on-site review of their plans to rob the pharmacy in the Minneapolis Medical Center. But despite the thieves’ success, Haines’s temper gets away from him, and he kicks pharmacist Don Peterson to death. Even worse, their car is spotted by a witness who gets a good look at Joe as they’re leaving the parking garage. Worst of all, the witness is Dr. Weather Karkinnen, a reconstructive surgeon who goes home each night from her demanding job—which these days involves surgery to separate a pair of 18-month-old twins joined at the head—to the arms of Lucas Davenport, her husband. Since the cops have one way of identifying Haines, whose victim managed to get some of his killer’s blood under his fingernails before he bled out, and another of identifying Joe, the conspirators have every incentive to cut telltale ends short, even if those telltale ends include each other. None of them is very smart, and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would probably have them under lock and key by nightfall if they only stood pat. Instead, however, Lyle calls on Cappy Garner, a friend with some experience as a hit man even though he’s not old enough to buy a beer, and then the fireworks begin. By the time Sandford calls it quits, eight more cast members will be dead, and virtually all the survivors will have been stalked, chased, shot at or otherwise menaced by all manner of tough guys. And by the time those two twins are finally separated, the one new relationship that will have blossomed is an unlikely friendship between an aspiring killer and his mentor.
Razor-sharp dialogue, a tautly controlled pace and enough homicides for a miniseries. What more could fans want?Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-15649-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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