A fast and turbulent mystery tale.
In Golden’s thriller, an ex-cop and his associate commit to taking down a ruthless criminal organization with influence on almost all city operations.
Police Detective Damon Walker is sentenced to prison for 20 years, convicted on multiple bogus charges after being set up by Mira, his partner on the police force. But later, to his surprise, she’s responsible for his release—one of the book’s many twists and reversals. Billionaire Mira—no last name—travels the world with prolonged stays at a Swiss chalet and a high-rise in Kuala Lumpur. She can afford what it takes to spring Damon, so they can work together to take down the Syndicate in the unnamed city they call home. The pair take on the work of investigative reporter Elaine Cross (a key character in Golden’s novel Beneath the Veil of Vengeance), who was murdered because she “wanted to burn the Syndicate to the ground, and she didn’t care who got caught in the fire.” With Mira as the getaway driver, Damon steals a leather-bound ledger that contains “everything. Bribes to judges, payouts to cops, laundering schemes.” However, he realizes the ledger is only the first step; now he needs to see who’s pulling the strings. So many characters change their allegiance in Golden’s novel that a reader could get whiplash keeping track of who’s on what side. The action is fast, the mood dark, and the dialogue punchy. However, the narrative structure is confusing; it’s not until a third of the way through the book that Elaine is introduced, and it’s her death that sets the story in motion. Overall, though, it’s an action-packed novel, and one that might work well as a graphic novel, due to its noirish descriptions—tailored coats billow in the wind, the glow from a cigarette lighter illuminates a face, and neon colors bleed into rain-soaked streets.
A fast and turbulent mystery tale.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781960976727
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Lamar Golden
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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