Entertainingly lurid but tonally adrift, this romp gets lost somewhere between satire and spectacle.
Heckenlively’s erotic novel blends sex, political intrigue, and spy-thriller action.
Mixing fiction with the appearance of reality from the start, the author frames his story as having been written by a woman he met at his mother-in-law’s retirement community who mysteriously disappeared. He then launches into the tale of Heidi Scherzinger, who realized her unique ability to manipulate men from a young age. By the early 1970s, when Heidi is only 23, she’s become a formidable madame in Chicago, drawing the attention of a mob boss who connects her with the Central Agency for Intelligence, or CAI (one of many slight adjustments Heckenlively makes to real-world organizations and characters), in order to set up a call-girl service that will gather dirt on politicians. Heidi changes her name to Catherine Darling and begins meeting with shadowy, high-level officials around Washington, D.C. “Honey, this town runs on sex,” one woman at the State Department tells her. “Always has, always will.” Among the dangerous men Heidi—now Catherine—must liaise with is Dr. Sidney Gottshalk, a scientist experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, and the handsome surveillance expert Milton Greenbaum. Heidi begins recruiting from D.C. universities, promising money and adventure to young, disillusioned women. (“All of this ‘equality’ seemed to be leading to a lot less sex,” Heidi tells them in her pitch.) Heidi starts to feel comfortable with her level of power and influence in D.C. when orders come down from President Dixon to obtain leverage over Democrats staying at the Waterford Hotel (a very thinly veiled reference to the infamous Watergate scandal). The resulting series of double crosses, legal maneuverings, and potential assassination attempts plunge Heidi and Milton into one difficult situation after another, each with higher stakes. The pair eventually hatch a spy-thriller-like plan worthy of an Ian Fleming novel in the hope of escaping Washington’s underbelly unscathed.
Heckenlively doesn’t hold back in depicting his self-proclaimed “proud hedonist” heroine. The novel is filled with outrageous and scintillating sex scenes, from encounters with gangsters in the White House to wild LSD trips that veer into S&M. The 1970s setting lends itself to some sharp reflections on gender and power, like Heidi’s observation that the complex housing the Agency “was designed so men could pretend to be James Bond.” Throughout her many titillating sex-capades, Heidi ultimately comes off as a tough but cliched femme fatale. The outlandish, sex-crazed vision of D.C. delivers some genuinely fun and funny moments, but it does feel at times as though the author can’t decide if Heidi’s story is a wild political thriller or an outright farce. The multiple slight name changes—President Nixon becoming President Dixon, the CIA becoming the CAI, LSD becoming “LDS”—register as the hallmarks of parody, while many of the dramatic scenes, such as Heidi’s morally fraught interactions with Senator Fitzgerald, feel rooted in traditional political-thriller territory, creating tonal whiplash. Heckenlively keeps the pages turning with brisk pacing and clever spins on hard-boiled dialogue, but the novel ultimately feels more episodic than incisive, never fully committing to either political critique or full-tilt farce.
Entertainingly lurid but tonally adrift, this romp gets lost somewhere between satire and spectacle.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781970844337
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Manhattan Book Group
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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