A fast-paced and exciting work of crime fiction.
After a drug cartel abducts his sister, a Kansas judge puts everything on the line to find her in this debut thriller.
In 2018, when Judge Benjamin Joel begins the murder trial of Vaughn Rummell, he doesn’t know that his own life is about to change drastically. The accused is a grandson of a drug kingpin, and his conviction seems certain despite the fact that he has a team of high-powered lawyers on his side. Then a group of masked, armed men abduct Benjamin, his sister, his children, and his fiancee, Keri. After an intense fight that leaves several cartel operatives dead, Benjamin reaches an agreement with the kidnappers: They’ll free everyone except for the judge’s sister, who will only be let go after he dismisses the case against Rummell. But before the verdict can be handed down, Benjamin embarks on a mission to locate and free his sibling on his own. With Keri’s assistance, he steals files from a local detective and tracks down multiple cartel members, locating safe houses, money, and drugs while untangling a web of allies and enemies. Ruhl’s action-packed thriller effectively keeps readers engaged as the characters travel through a messy world of organized crime. The narrative keeps up a swift pace, as in this passage, after Benjamin manages to shoot one of his abductors: “He had some fight left in him, it seemed, which wasn’t all bad. I didn’t want him to die, I wanted to get information out of him. But dammit—I was running out of time.” The excitement rarely wanes, though the narrator does veer into long-winded tangents about court procedure at times, and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with who’s who in the ever expanding cast. Still, readers will enjoy how the judge unearths secrets and makes connections, and the ending is satisfying.
A fast-paced and exciting work of crime fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 979-8481908014
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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