A treat for fans of crime fiction. Delaware and Sturgis are a durable duo.
Psychologist Alex Delaware and Lt. Milo Sturgis collaborate for the 40th time to solve a series of puzzling murders in the Los Angeles area.
Deep into a Saturday night, a car pulls up to a hospital and the driver dumps a body and speeds away. Despite first impressions, it’s not an overdose. But then the coroner finds no wounds on the body. Hmm, what’s going on? It’s the first in a cluster of killings that have the two friends working together again. The victim was a photogenic 25-year-old woman with images of herself posted online. It appears she may have hooked up with a fake movie producer. Then, a guy who is shot in the neck appears to have been responsible for the woman’s death. And then another, also shot with precision to hit the jugular and carotid artery at an exact angle. That victim may have been coming onto someone’s daughter a little too strongly. Perhaps these two separate victims were killed for two separate motives, “united in death by one hired killer.” Or “Mr. Sniper’s a knight-errant avenging victims of abuse.” Or he might be helping someone in a custody battle. In one case, a woman is shot in a rowboat in the middle of a lake, leaving her unharmed child wailing and helpless. Author Kellerman, a psychologist himself, applies his professional knowledge with a light touch, mixing in a generous helping of police procedure, so all the readers notice is that they’re being entertained. And speaking of helpings, Milo seems to enjoy helping himself to whatever is in the Delawares’ refrigerator. (What else would you expect? They’ve been friends since 1985.) The two men are the best at what they do and complement each other in cracking open difficult cases. Alex’s wife, Robin, helps him “zero in on a common theme” about the killings. What a great relationship: When she’s not pursuing her own interests, they’re either having thoughtful conversations or joyous sex. Meanwhile, Milo admires Alex for his intellect: “I go to sleep and produce night-music, you reinvent the wheel.” The story moves quickly and smoothly, with vivid descriptions such as a woman with “hoop earrings the size of drink coasters.”
A treat for fans of crime fiction. Delaware and Sturgis are a durable duo.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593497692
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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