Plenty of action, plenty of fun.
Fade is a badass operator whom even a coma can’t stop.
Salam al-Fayed is an ex-SEAL, ex-CIA, and ex-Homeland Security agent, an American of Arab descent who takes out an entire Black Ops team that’s charged with either “recruiting him or burying him.” You can call him Fade, as everyone else does. He’s a brave warrior and antihero who tries to help a girl in distress and gets stabbed and shot in the melee. He winds up in a coma from which he may never awaken, but of course he does. Then he may be destined to spend "the rest of his life rotting in a prison hospital bed,” but of course he doesn’t. After being pumped full of meds and blood from ethically questionable sources, he recovers and undergoes extensive rehab. But since the internet thinks he’s dead, his colleague and former friend Matt Egan tells him he’s now Frederick Abdel Darwish (so you can still call him Fade). All this is a creative setup for what is otherwise a standard thriller. Legendary warrior that he is, greater powers intend to use him for their own questionable purposes. Enter the obscenely wealthy Jon Lowe, who’s decided that the world’s so messed up he has no choice but to take it over. To make it a better place, of course. There’s also a Chinese scientist who engineered Covid-19 to target people over 70, whom he believes are useless. He’s going to try again, by creating a weapon of mass destruction from the building blocks of life. Reports of a secret lab bring a team including Fade to Madagascar, where they find a drought-stricken village that criminals are robbing of food aid. In the wilderness, Egan sets a challenge to a five-man team including Fade in which only four of them can possibly succeed. The unexpected result adds another dimension to Fade’s personality—he’s not a cardboard-cutout killer. One may sense that Mills began with a title and then built a character and story around it, but that’s fine. In time, a beautiful woman is assigned to share his apartment and watch over him, subject to terms and conditions. For example, sex no more than seven times a week. With that, the reader might expect at least one vivid sex scene. Alas, no. One person notes that Fade, pushing 40, was half nuts even before the coma. Apparently, that doesn’t change.
Plenty of action, plenty of fun.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9798893310399
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Authors Equity
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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