A convoluted political thriller with granular technical details likely to appeal only to hardcore fans of the genre.
In LaFalce’s thriller, an American con man is called back by his foreign bosses to perform one last job—to help launch an atomic bomb on Washington, D.C.
The novel opens on May 31, 2017, as a minor atomic bomb goes off near the Pentagon. The incident triggers a presidential evacuation and an intense investigation into who is responsible. The narrative then jumps back to 1980 to introduce 22-year-old Mike, who works an entry-level government job while stealing credit cards in his spare time. From there, the story continues skipping around chronologically, chronicling Mike’s con-artist grandparents in the 1950s, Mike’s college friendship with a young Iranian named Ahmed, and Mike’s decision to sell classified information to Middle Eastern spies. In the present day, the now middle-aged Mike is once again called upon by his former foreign bosses—this time, to help with an atomic bomb attack on the United States. But when Ahmed suddenly reappears and U.S. agents are hot on his heels, Mike is no longer sure exactly who he can trust. The only thing he does know is that he’ll have to use all the tricks he’s learned as a grifter if he wants to escape with his life. LaFalce offers detailed insights into the inner workings of political protocols, such as how to go about launching a retaliatory nuclear strike. Some of this material will likely come across as a little too detailed to casual readers, and the novel’s tone remains consistently detached—almost sterile. This unfortunately results in less-than-exciting action scenes (“a chemical and fission detonator triggered molecular fusion within the highly enriched uranium core of the weapon”), and the protagonists never feel emotionally authentic (“Like a Halloween witch, she cackled as the auto glided away. He did not care”). Ultimately, despite such a dramatically charged premise, the execution falls flat.
A convoluted political thriller with granular technical details likely to appeal only to hardcore fans of the genre.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798344366104
Page Count: 204
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2025
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
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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