A promising and confident political thriller that takes big swings and lands some punches.
In Snowling’s debut novel, an American campaign manager gets a crash course in Central American politics.
After serving in the military, Rex Nash spent eight years working on campaigns, trying to change government for the better. (When someone asks him how he could do such work even though he hates politicians, he quips, “But I love to help get them out of office.”) When the grind became too much, he threw in the towel and took a quiet job with an insurance lobbying firm. However, when he gets the opportunity to reconnect with old flame Jessica Roark, Rex moves to North Carolina to be closer to her and goes back to campaign work. He’s right in the middle of successfully executing a long-shot campaign for a local congressional candidate when Jessica abruptly ends their rekindled relationship via text message. The heartbroken Rex distracts himself with a job managing the campaign of Raul Vasquez, a reformist candidate running for president of Panama. Unbeknownst to Rex, the campaign has already drawn the attention of a number of unsavory figures, including ruthless hit men and shady billionaires. The sitting president stacks the courts to hold onto power, and then a bomb goes off in Vasquez’s apartment—with Rex present. Rex and Vasquez survive the blast, but Rex becomes a prime suspect in the crime, as many in Panama already think he’s CIA—and the real CIA seems content to let him take the fall. A manhunt ensues, and Rex’s problems follow him back to America. Will he be able to stay alive, clear his name, get Vasquez elected, and win back the woman of his dreams?
Over the course of this political thriller, Snowling offers readers prose that’s muscular and engaging, particularly during the action sequences, as in the aftermath of the aforementioned bombing: “He stumbled out of the library and into what was left of the living room. The windows had been blown out, and the hardwood was charred. Bodyguards rushed past him and into the library to collect Vasquez, hurt but alive. Rex tried to see what was wrong with the candidate, but he had to grip his own head to stop the ringing.” Some readers will find that much of the novel, which hopscotches between the third-person perspectives of Rex and a number of Panamanian politicians and criminals, is reminiscent of the Netflix thriller series Narcos, which even gets name-checked by Rex himself. The plot takes a while to get going, and the mechanisms that Snowling uses to get Rex to various places sometimes feel clumsy or needlessly complicated. (The plotline involving Jessica, for example, will particularly strain readers’ credulity.) Even so, the overall story is consistently entertaining and intricate, and Snowling’s real-life background as a political consultant in Panama adds some color to the proceedings. For the most part, Snowling shows good writerly instincts, and his future offerings—perhaps continuing Rex’s adventures—will likely be worth a look.
A promising and confident political thriller that takes big swings and lands some punches.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985581362
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Great Story Network
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
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
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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