A gripper that suffers some from overboiled dialogue (“There’s no charge for the one who raped my girlfriend, but he owes me...
British author Wignall debuts with a taut and very dark thriller about a hit man who finds he has become the prey of someone else’s stalkings.
J.J. Hoffman, like most professional killers, has an eye for detail but is basically cold-blooded. Which is a lucky thing, because he now finds himself in a situation that requires clear thinking and ruthless action: J.J.’s “boss” has been murdered, and the telephone of his “organization” in London has been disconnected. It’s soon obvious that this is more than random bad luck, since organization men Townsend, Hooper, and Berg have all been murdered as well—along with J.J.’s Swiss girlfriend Aurianna, who had no connection to the organization whatsoever except (unknowingly) through J.J. What to do? Well, the first thing you need at a time like this is intelligence, so instead of going underground J.J. walks right into the eye if the hurricane and tracks down everyone he can from the organization—or from its clients in the CIA or MI5—to find what the hell is going on. It seems that Berg may not be dead after all—in fact may be behind the whole thing. It also seems that the Russian mafia is involved—although it may have more to do with British operatives. In any case, apparently it’ll be necessary for J.J. to go to Vermont to track down the widow of someone he whacked in Moscow several years ago. It goes without saying that a number of J.J.’s sources (some of them old friends) will have to be quickly disposed of, along with quite a few bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, hey, that’s business.
A gripper that suffers some from overboiled dialogue (“There’s no charge for the one who raped my girlfriend, but he owes me the regular fee for Wilson and Sanderton”). Still, it moves briskly to its surprising end.Pub Date: April 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-1267-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
You'll kill this one fast and be glad you did.
When a corporate lawyer who divorced his first wife and married her more successful sister is found dead in his home in the Hamptons, his teenage son goes on trial for murder.
The fans who put Burke's (The Wife, 2018, etc.) last domestic thriller on the bestseller list are going to be happy with this one, a gimmick-free murder mystery with a two-stage surprise ending and uncommonly few credibility-straining plot elements. No double narrator! No unreliable narrator! No handsome psychopaths from central casting! And though there's usually at least one character in this type of book who isn't quite three-dimensional, most of the players here feel like they could have worked in a domestic novel without a murder, which is a kind of test for believability and page-worthiness. The star of the show is Chloe Taylor, a woman's magazine editor-in-chief who has become a hero of the #MeToo movement and a target of misogynist haters on social media. The lumpy area beneath the surface of her smooth, pretty life is the fact that she married her boozy, unstable, maternally incompetent sister's ex-husband and has been raising her nephew, Ethan, as her own son. When his father turns up dead, Ethan tells so many lies about his doings on the evening in question that despite the fact that he's obviously not a murderer, he ends up the No. 1 suspect. As soon as he's arrested, his real mom, Nicky, swoops into town and the sisters form an uneasy and shifting alliance. You'll think you have this thing all figured out, but a series of reveals at the eleventh hour upend those theories. Most of the important people in this novel are women—the head cop, the defense attorney, the judge—and their competent performances create a solid underpinning for the plot.
You'll kill this one fast and be glad you did.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285337-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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