A smart, complex domestic thriller.
A mother and daughter find new appreciation and understanding for each other when their lives are threatened.
When New York University student Cleo shows up at her mother Katrina’s Park Slope house for dinner, she finds signs of a struggle—and her mother’s shoe covered in blood. Mother and daughter had been estranged since Katrina interfered in Cleo’s relationship with a white-collar drug dealer, but Cleo instantly snaps into action, determined to find her mother. Aided by a sympathetic cop and hindered by her lackadaisical father (who’s separated from her mother), Cleo investigates her mom’s computer as well as her place of business. Katrina had always led Cleo to believe she was a patent attorney, but it turns out she was a fixer for wealthy and powerful people. She was also, in her youth, an abandoned child who lived at Haven House until she was adopted at the age of 14. Cleo finds her mother’s journal from those years and feels appalled—and guilty—to read about the abuse her mother endured. As Cleo is drawn deeper and deeper into the details of her mother’s life and disappearance, she herself may be in danger. McCreight alternates first-person chapters about Cleo’s search with chapters in Katrina’s voice about the days leading up to her disappearance, and also includes the occasional transcript of a therapy session, journal entry, or legal document connected to one of Katrina’s big cases. The build-up is extremely well paced and effective, created brick by suspenseful brick. No one, of course, is who they seem. Eventually the two main narratives converge in a somewhat flat climax—but most of the loose threads are satisfactorily tied up. Both Katrina and Cleo are tough as nails and vulnerable as hell, which makes it easy to root for them both against all the forces of (mostly masculine) evil they have to combat.
A smart, complex domestic thriller.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536421
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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