The guess is that we’ll be seeing more “Trouble” in the future, which is a good thing.
An ex-con who used to be one of Philadelphia’s toughest cops is swept up in a welter of murder, corruption, and double-dealing.
Toussaint Batiste doesn’t care much for being addressed by his nickname, “Troubleman,” or “Trouble” for short. But having just finished a stretch in prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while he was still with the Philadelphia PD, Toussaint can’t seem to be anywhere, not even in a car belonging to the son of a trusted friend, without trouble finding him. The car—or in street parlance, “whip”—belongs to Jay-Jay Wei, son of John Wei, owner of a successful restaurant in the city’s Chinatown district, who’s offering Toussaint a job and a place to live in gratitude for having saved him from a protection racket. Jay-Jay’s taking Toussaint to his parents’ house, but first he’s stopping to make a bag drop with some unsavory characters who, it turns out, will kill them both if Toussaint doesn’t take some quick and brutal defensive measures. It’s only the beginning of Toussaint’s harrowing reintroduction to the not-so-brotherly street life in the City of Brotherly Love. Before long, Jay-Jay is arrested for murder, his distraught father is contemplating taking matters into his own hands with his .22-caliber pistol, and Toussaint, who only wants to be left alone to make his own, preferably peaceable way back into society, now finds he must navigate by fair, foul, and mostly violent means through the city’s Black and Chinese underworlds while dealing with his one-time co-workers in the police department, including the sultry Sgt. Natasha Dobbs, who seems to hanker being more to him than an inside source. To say the least, there’s a whole lot of page-turning stuff packed in this latest thriller from K’wan, who in addition to an aptitude for orchestrating and propelling action sequences, displays a knack for colorfully droll dialogue and antic set pieces bordering on the surreal. He seems to be channeling Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, and Chester Himes in one rollicking stream.
The guess is that we’ll be seeing more “Trouble” in the future, which is a good thing.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780374394257
Page Count: 320
Publisher: AUWA/MCD
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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