A deeply emotional read. And when the action is over, the coda could water an atheist’s eye.
A priest in Vatican City leads a perilous rescue effort surrounded by Rome’s Nazi occupiers.
In 1943 and 1944, Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann terrorizes a starving Rome. But he is forbidden to enter Vatican City, at one-fifth of a square mile, the tiniest country in the world. If Jews or escaped Allied POWs can manage to get there, they may have a chance to be smuggled to safety. The novel is inspired by a real historical figure named Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish envoy to the Vatican. O’Flaherty and a small group go to great lengths to secretly aid as many people as they can. Discovery means death, so the group uses elaborate ruses—they form a choir as a cover, and O’Flaherty quietly passes along individual instructions during choir practice. They speak in code—“Books in the Library” means escapees being protected. It’s a risky game they’re about. Hitler only tolerates the Vatican’s existence and could wipe it out in the blink of an eye, so O’Flaherty’s superiors are deeply uneasy about the monsignor’s activities. Meanwhile, Hauptmann knows there is an Escape Line, and he is eager to prove it. And given that his “favoured interrogation tool is the blowtorch,” his odds look better than O’Flaherty’s. But the “nuisance of a priest” is not nicknamed Hughdini for nothing, and he is moral to his core. If the story were told in typical thriller style, emphasizing action over language, it would still be good, but O’Connor’s phrasings are a special joy. One unnamed cardinal is “a long drink of cross-eyed, buck-toothed misery if ever there was, he’d bore the snots off a wet horse.” On Christmas Eve, three bitterly cold German soldiers are invited indoors for some holiday cheer. They are “fine examples of the super-race”: One of them is “a haddock-faced, lumpenshouldered, Wurst-fingered corner boy, that ugly the tide wouldn’t take him out.” And the Vatican Embassy has “rats you could saddle.”
A deeply emotional read. And when the action is over, the coda could water an atheist’s eye.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-60945-835-5
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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