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
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.
Murder disrupts the filming of—what else?—The Word Is Murder, based on the first novel starring author Horowitz and his sometime partner, ex-copper Daniel Hawthorne.
With commendably dramatic timing, gofer Izzy Mays bursts into the middle of a pivotal shot on location at The Stade in Hastings to announce that Hawthorne’s been murdered. Of course, what she means (though Horowitz takes his time clarifying this ambiguity) is that David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, has been fatally stabbed in the neck. Suspicion falls on James Aubrey, the agent Caine had just fired; Izzy, because Caine had caused her to be fired, too, though he ended up making his exit first; Ralph Seymour, the washed-up actor who’d returned from New Zealand to play Horowitz opposite Caine, his mortal enemy; and producer Teresa de León, who’s abruptly lost an important source of funding for the project; director Cy Truman; and screenwriter Shanika Harris, because why not? After Hawthorne builds meticulous hypothetical cases against several of these suspects, provoking Teresa’s apt rejoinder, “All those questions in the script and now you’re asking them for real,” he responds to Horowitz’s theory that he may have been the intended target after all by sharing a story from his early days as a private investigator in what ends up looking like the most elaborately extended red herring in the history of detective fiction. The two plots, past and present—or, to be more precise, past and present-day-adaptation-of-a-story-from-the-less-distant-past, are eventually woven together in ways only Horowitz’s most devoted fans will celebrate.
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780063305748
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
