A genuinely funny sendup of a much-lampooned industry.
In Leaf’s comedic murder mystery, a struggling actress finds a dreadful surprise in the trunk of her car.
Vincenza Morgan moves from a small town in Minnesota, hoping to start a grander life in Los Angeles, a “city of searchers” portrayed with lacerating wit by the author. The aspiring actress struggles, barely making ends meet working the cash register at a marijuana dispensary. She lands a big audition for a movie starring famous actress Reese Witherspoon, but just before she gets her chance to show what she can do, she discovers a corpse in the trunk of her car. The man has clearly been killed, and the murder weapon, a revolver, lies beside him. She recognizes the victim: Tom Selva, a fellow actor and a man with whom she was sometimes romantically involved. After her audition—it’s just too important to miss, even to report a murder—she wrestles with her predicament, as the evidence clearly implicates her in the crime. Vincenza comes to believes that she’s being followed by members of her cultlike church, the Church of Life, which promises its members access to “esoteric truths” and the establishment of a “new Eden.” She begins to suspect the church’s head, James Armstrong (who calls himself the “Supreme Pilot”), might have had something to do with Selva’s death, and she fears her own life is in danger—a state of affairs as chilling as it is morbidly funny, the signature style of the author. Leaf’s portrayal of show business in Los Angeles isn’t original at all—this is all well-covered ground—but the story is delightfully humorous, and the murder mystery is engrossing. The book is filled with hilarious insights, as in a description of incarceration: “In some ways jail was alike to a cruise ship. You tried to make friends. You were sickened by the food. You couldn’t jump out the windows.” This is lighthearted literary entertainment at its best—easily companionable, intelligent, and brimming with artful humor.
A genuinely funny sendup of a much-lampooned industry.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781637587881
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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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