A shrewd and energetic mystery series installment.
A capital murder trial stirs up a former judge’s murky past in Ruhl’s thriller sequel.
After helping to dismantle a drug cartel, Ben Joel has spent the last couple of years hiding with his family. But a hit man named Geronimo, who helped him in the past, tracks him down in the present to ask for a favor. He wants to pay Ben handsomely to represent Mia Delarosa, who’s in jail for the ax murder of a retired cop and alleged child molester. Ben has barely started digging into Mia’s case in Kansas, where he’d once been a lawyer and a judge, when he chances upon a drug addict who claims to recognize him. The man claims it wasn’t a heroin overdose that killed Ben’s mother 27 years ago—it was cops whom he won’t name. After Ben spots ties between his own past and Mia’s present, he starts hunting for more evidence and runs into more crime, including potential human trafficking and multiple murders. It’s hardly surprising when it turns out that someone has put a target on his back. This second series installment features a large cast, including a government agent who’s investigating both a recent murder and events from the earlier Ben-centric novel, and a billionaire socialite who may have killed Ben’s dad. Ruhl, the author of Verdict Denied (2021), deftly juggles the many players involved, many of whom Ben doesn’t know well or can’t fully trust, including the hit man who kicks everything off. They’re all connected to compelling mysteries regarding, for example, what really happened to Ben’s mom and the identity of Mia’s reputed accomplice. The author loads his pages with sharp, rapid-fire dialogue (“‘What happened?’ ‘Fight.’ ‘You win?’ ‘No one did.’ ‘No one ever does’”). But he also grounds the story in the real-life 21st-century pandemic; Ben argues remotely at a Zoom hearing as anxious defendants “play the Covid card” to manipulate proceedings. This tale delivers unexpected shocks, as well, even before the final act and gratifying denouement.
A shrewd and energetic mystery series installment.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 497
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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