Morality and passion collide in a sophisticated legal thriller.
A young English lawyer confronts moral ambiguity in Palestine under the British Mandate.
Set in Palestine in 1933 and based on true events, Wilson’s smart, fast-paced novel focuses on the months following the assassination of Haim Arlosoroff, gunned down on a Tel Aviv beach in June 1933 after he negotiates a controversial agreement with Hitler’s regime that will ease the international boycott against Nazi Germany in exchange for allowing more Jews to flee the country. Ivor Castle, a recent graduate of Oxford and a Jew himself, but one who feels “more at home among the gentiles in the country of his birth than among the Jews of the Promised Land,” is recruited to assist in the defense of two Russians charged with the crime. His work and life quickly become complicated when he embarks on an affair with Tsiona Kerem, a beautiful and enigmatic artist from Jerusalem whose testimony may provide an alibi for his clients. Ivor tries to thrash his way out of an ethical thicket, as the evidence points at one moment to his clients’ guilt and at another to the possibility that Arlosoroff’s killers may have been Arabs, a result eagerly sought by Charles Gross, a fellow Oxford graduate and supporter of the controversial Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Ivor’s position becomes even more perilous when he meets Susannah Green, an attractive young American whose father is working quietly to rescue German Jews. In all his machinations, Ivor also serves as something of a proxy for the complexity of life in a “place of violence and blood—or at least, a place of multiple clashing dreams of belonging.” Wilson maintains the suspense of the trial’s outcome until his atmospheric story’s concluding pages, but there’s much more to engage the reader before this mature work reaches its end.
Morality and passion collide in a sophisticated legal thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-805-24369-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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