An engaging, snaking, and spirit-tinged murder tale about obsession and control.
An FBI agent becomes embroiled with a magnetic rock musician in this crime novel.
Boston, 1992. Special Agent Peter Morrow is not winning any awards at the FBI. He only applied for the job as a joke in the first place, and he has trouble hiding his disdain for his bosses, co-workers, and some of the victims he works with. After being removed from the missing persons unit for punching a social worker in the jaw, Pete is given a new assignment. It seems an Army private stationed in Rome, New York, may be dealing heroin for the Utica mob. But when Pete gets to the Army base, he learns from the commander that the supposed dealer, Claude Hopner, is AWOL. Pete hangs around anyway to question the members of Black Dog, the Canadian rock band that happens to be playing a gig at the base that night—he suspects they are in fact a cog in the drug ring since they seem to know Hopner. Pete’s rewarded with a major development in the case: After the show, the base commander (another potential cog) is found brutally murdered, with a note affixed to the body referencing “Hopner’s sardines.” The story gets even weirder when it turns out the dead “commander” was lying about his identity. Pete’s interest in Black Dog only increases after that, particularly in the band’s otherworldly bassist and composer, Jade McCrae, whose extended family has connections to Hopner and the dead man—and to some really interesting ideas about gods and reincarnation. When Hopner turns up drawn and quartered in the Arizona desert, the case becomes so high profile that Pete struggles to keep control of it. Is it a mob hit? An instance of ritual sacrifice? There are many parties with a preferred outcome—the Mafia, the politicians, the FBI, a coven of cultists—but Pete has decided that this case will play out the way he wants it to, even if he has to work a bit of magic of his own.
Michalson’s prose, as narrated by the loquacious Pete, is by turns wisecracking and obsessive. Here, he experiments with a bit of the mysticism he encounters in an extended Black Dog scene in order to focus his thoughts: “I lit a candle and set it on my hearth. Put the charms into a large wooden bowl….Placed the bowl near the candle and imagined the sea. Felt the moment of autumn evening and knew Aphrodite was in it. Then I took out a yellow legal pad and began to sketch out a viable plan of action.” The plot moves slowly, and the book is easily a hundred pages too long. Plus, it will take readers a while to get over Pete’s sometimes-insufferable snark. Even so, Pete’s quest takes him in unexpected occult directions, opening up an intricate world of ecstasy and paranoia. The author doesn’t quite achieve the level of emotional depth she seems to be striving for, but the novel’s angst and atmosphere—both authentically ’90s—make for a strangely alluring reading experience.
An engaging, snaking, and spirit-tinged murder tale about obsession and control.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9853522-6-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Arula Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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