A sprawling return to well-worn paths.
Making her 11th appearance, Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong sets her sights on "the largest drug operation that had ever permeated the planet."
The opioid scourge, which can be traced to top branches of government, hits home for Caitlin and her boyfriend, reformed mob enforcer Cort Wesley Masters, when his teenage son, Luke, nearly dies of an overdose. Then, bizarrely, nearly 300 people suddenly die in the border town of Camino Pass. The novel flashes back to 1898, when all of the same town's children are kidnapped just as Texas Ranger William Ray Strong—Caitlin's great-grandfather—is about to deliver the young Pancho Villa to stand trial. Cort Wesley, who is angrily determined to avenge Luke's near death, has a direct connection to the past in the form of an apparition named Leroy who appears in the back seat of his car. As tough as she is, Caitlin has her hands full with the present. The book is stuffed with incident and characters, including Native American activist Yarek Bone, aged Ranger-turned–DEA agent Doyle Lodge, and Caitlin's loose cannon of a half sister, Nola Delgado. A gun for hire whose mother was the feared Mexican crime boss the Red Widow, Nola has gotten involved with Luke's vulnerable college-age brother, Dylan. Both Dylan and Luke have been targeted by bad guys in the past. While some judicious trims would have made the novel less of a slog for some readers—the Pancho Villa storyline is pretty half-baked—fans of the series will be more than happy to indulge in all its trimmings.
A sprawling return to well-worn paths.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8470-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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