An engaging series entry with sensational characters and a focused mystery.
In this fourth installment of a thriller series, Los Angeles police detective Gabriel McRay reluctantly works with a psychic to close a missing person cold case.
Gabriel has a troubled history, and most recently, he suffered through torture by a serial killer. In an effort to give him a bit of a break, his superiors hand him a 30-year-old case involving the disappearance of teenager Nancy Lynn Lewicki in 1988. He’s just diving in and reexamining the evidence when he gets an offer of help that he doesn’t want after celebrity TV psychic Carmen Jenette convinces Nancy’s parents to hire her. Although Carmen believes in her own abilities, she feels that her fame has made people think she’s a charlatan, and she hopes that solving Nancy’s case will remedy that. Gabriel, however, remains skeptical even after Carmen insists that he’s a “conduit”—that Nancy is somehow reaching out to the detective from beyond the grave. After Carmen mentions the investigation on her show, someone attacks her, although she’s able to fend them off. Gabriel soon has a break in the case, which leads him to a person of interest, but he eventually realizes that Carmen could prove to be an invaluable asset. Stevens’ character development is exceptional in this installment. Although Carmen initially comes off as pretentious and Gabriel acts churlishly toward her, they’re both shown to be devoted to resolving the mystery. Gabriel’s scene-stealing medical examiner fiancee, Ming Li, and Nancy’s mother, Pauline, whose unwavering optimism counters the protagonist’s somber past, add to the enjoyment. Best of all, the author usefully limits Carmen’s gift—it’s helpful, but it doesn’t simply reveal the culprit. As in preceding installments, Stevens’ concise prose keeps the investigation in the foreground, and plot turns will keep readers’ interest until the final page.
An engaging series entry with sensational characters and a focused mystery.Pub Date: April 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9970068-2-7
Page Count: 394
Publisher: FYD Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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