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
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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