A melancholy, melodious portrayal of an honest man operating in a broken world.
In Davis’ crime novel, a retired detective returns to the force late in life to pursue a clever serial murderer and a copycat killer.
Detective David Cross has spent “Twenty years chasing a shadow,” one whom he calls Ace, an elusive serial killer whose hallmark is leaving a specific playing card in the mouths of victims he deems deserving of punishment. Pursuing Ace destroys David mentally, and he leaves the force as a broken husk. Then, Ace makes a surprise visit to the former detective’s home. David can’t see the killer’s face, but Ace gives him a card—the ace of spades—while urging him to “Stop the pretender,” a female copycat assassin who’s turning out inferior work, sterile and cold murder tableaux compared to Ace’s artful kills of those who have eluded justice. Reluctantly returning to his former job at the age of 78, David again clashes with Police Chief Anthony Prescott; he also becomes a mentor to an intern on the task force, young Emily Roberts, who’s eager and ambitious, though David worries that the case will consume her as it did him. When the copycat killer begins incorporating David’s comments from press conferences into new murder scenarios, his determination to catch both the original killer who has long haunted him and the newcomer who may be even worse only increases. Davis sacrifices realism for an unusual lyricism, describing a reclining body as “a collapsed scaffolding draped in hospital linen”; even the most mundane events feel imbued with poetic meaning. (Sheaves of paper ejected by a printer are compared to snowfall, and eyes dart back and forth like a metronome.) The characters are crafted with precision and revealed by degrees. David, closed in and gruff, tries to stifle his growing tenderness toward Emily, and his sense of humor finally emerges near the end of the book. The motivation underlying Emily’s opaque calmness, patience, and drive also reveals itself with time. The amplification of minute details throughout the story creates a sense of unease that demands resolution. The city is unnamed—it could be anywhere that crime proliferates and the justice system fails.
A melancholy, melodious portrayal of an honest man operating in a broken world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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