A clever but less-than-cohesive addition to the annals of speculative fiction.
In this sequel to Beat the Devils (2022), America is fast turning into a Nazi state under President Joseph McCarthy, posing more life-threatening challenges for LA private eye and Holocaust survivor Morris Baker.
The year is 1959. It's open warfare on Jews, and Gestapo-outfitted "Hueys" (agents of the House Un-American Activities Committee) are rounding up Asians following a mysterious department store bombing by a Korean American. Baker, formerly of the LAPD, has been hired to find Henry Kissinger, a little-known policy adviser to Vice President Richard Nixon. (Nixon, meanwhile, is hatching a secret plot to sell nuclear warheads to Japan.) Kissinger's disappearance is somehow tied to the murder of Baker's one-time actress girlfriend Elizabeth Short (not the Black Dahlia, just as the novel's Joel Cairo is not the Maltese Falcon character). Hooked on phenobarbital to cope with lung cancer—a result of radiation experiments he was subjected to in a concentration camp—Baker is prone to painful blackouts. And when he's conscious, he gets beat up and strung up. The book is stuffed with fanciful sidelights: Sidney Lumet and Darryl Zanuck working as porn directors; conspiracy theorists claiming the Nazis were actually extraterrestrials. As a practicing Jew—and a guilt-ridden one to boot—Baker is a rarity in crime fiction. But it's difficult to accept him as both "schnapps-swilling schlimazel" and fearless hero—one who single-handedly thwarts a plot by former Nazi scientists to bomb Los Angeles. And though the novel is a darker, more serious effort than its overly flippant predecessor, it goes off in more directions than it can handle.
A clever but less-than-cohesive addition to the annals of speculative fiction.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781538719473
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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