by John Worsley Simpson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 2012
The unfolding mystery—not the characters—will keep readers interested in this dark tale.
Mystery novelist Simpson (A Debt of Death, 2008, etc.) weaves a twist-filled tale of deception about a young wife who disappears at a mall in upstate New York.
Like Gillian Flynn’s best-selling Gone Girl (2012), this novel begins with the disappearance of a young wife. Rebecca vanishes while she and her husband, Liam, are shopping at the Bennett Mall in Cheektowaga, N.Y., near Buffalo, just months after they married. At first, Rebecca’s disappearance looks like an abduction, but the issue becomes murkier as the novel fills in the background on the newlyweds’ relationship. The couple met at a medical conference in Florida; in passages about those first encounters, readers feel that Rebecca is playing Liam from the start. She agrees with him perhaps too readily and, as she entices him sexually, avoids talking about her past. Why does she do it? What’s her game? These questions lie at the heart of the novel but never become as urgent as they should. Both members of the couple are so self-absorbed that readers don’t feel the love between them in a way that would make Liam’s reactions to Rebecca’s disappearance poignant. Liam has tense confrontations with a security guard and with the police after his wife vanishes, which help keep the plot moving swiftly but don’t answer basic questions about his character: Does he really miss Rebecca? Or is he, not Rebecca, playing a role? Even if the characters remain flat, however, the story has a full-throttle pace that maintains interest. Simpson also structures the novel as a series of date-stamped sections that help readers keep track of events. The writing is clean but sometimes has redundancies: “Peters would have been able to avoid the kick and disarm Sven in one motion had the old man’s move not come as such a surprise that it caught Peters completely off guard.” The novel contains strong language but nothing unfamiliar to readers who watch R-rated thrillers.
The unfolding mystery—not the characters—will keep readers interested in this dark tale.Pub Date: May 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475266603
Page Count: 220
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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by Amy Tintera ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.
Against her better judgment, Lucy Chase returns to her hometown of Plumpton, Texas, for her grandmother’s birthday, knowing full well that almost everyone in town still believes she murdered her best friend five years ago, when they were in their early 20s.
Coincidentally—or is it?—Ben Owens, a true-crime podcaster, is also in town, interviewing Lucy’s family and former friends about the murder of Savannah Harper, “just the sweetest girl you ever met,” who died from several violent blows to the head. Lucy was found hours later covered in blood, with no memory of what happened. She was—and is—a woman with secrets, which has not endeared her to the people of Plumpton; their narrative is that she was always violent, secretive, difficult. But Ben wants to tell Lucy’s story; attractive and relentless, he uncovers new evidence and coaxes new interviews, and people slowly begin to question whether Lucy is truly guilty. Lucy, meanwhile, lets down her guard, and as she and Ben draw closer together, she has to finally face the truth of her past and unmask the murderer of her complicated, gorgeous, protective friend. Most of the novel is told from Lucy’s point of view, which allows for a natural unspooling of the layers of her life and her story. She’s strong, she’s prickly, and we gradually begin to understand just how wronged she has been. The story is a striking commentary on the insular and harmful nature of small-town prejudice and how women who don’t fit a certain mold are often considered outliers, if not straight-up villains. Tintera is smart to capitalize on how the true-crime podcast boom informs and infuses the current fictional thriller scene; she’s also effective at writing action that transcends the podcast structure.
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250880314
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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