Fans of Gardner’s Tessa Leoni, D.D. Warren, and Flora Dane will embrace her new heroine's grit and empathy.
Gardner introduces Frankie Elkin, a tough, street-smart survivor who has found her calling searching for missing persons.
Frankie is an alcoholic who considers herself responsible for the death of the man she loved. As penance, she travels around the country, volunteering to locate missing people for whom there may be no new leads. She knows that not everyone believes in her gifts or trusts her motives, but she cannot back down from the opportunity to find answers for these grieving families. When she comes to Boston to investigate the disappearance of Angelique Badeau, she takes a cheap apartment and a bartending job at a scruffy neighborhood bar, sticking out like a sore thumb but determined to make headway in a case that has baffled the police. Teenagers go missing and teenagers run away, but not Angelique. She and her brother survived the earthquake in Haiti to live with their aunt in America, taking advantage of opportunities to work hard and get a good education. Frankie discovers that Angelique is not the only teenage girl to have disappeared in the neighborhood; a few months after her, another girl went missing. This girl’s family, torn apart by gang violence and poverty, may have been reason enough to run away, but Frankie has been around the block enough to know: There are no coincidences. Then Angelique passes a message to her brother: proof of life, but no hint as to where she’s being held. With the help of a ruggedly handsome detective, Frankie digs relentlessly into the case—until people start dying. Now in a race against time, she must discover why these girls have been kidnapped—and why they might be running out of time. Gardner is a pro at writing tough-as-nails, wiseass, broken-yet-steely female characters, and Frankie does not disappoint. Plus, it’s a pretty solid mystery.
Fans of Gardner’s Tessa Leoni, D.D. Warren, and Flora Dane will embrace her new heroine's grit and empathy.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4504-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.
After the events of Book of Night (2022), Charlie Hall is forced to hunt down the perpetrator of a terrible massacre.
Charlie Hall is the Hierophant: It’s her job to be tethered to a powerful, independent shadow—a “Blight”— and hunt down other Blights for the Cabals, the heads of their respective shadow-magic specialties. The Cabals use the difficult job of Hierophant as a punishment, but Charlie agreed to take it on so she could be the person tethered to Vince, aka Red, the Blight who posed as a human and ended up dating and falling in love with Charlie. The Cabal leaders used magic to steal the part of Red’s memory that contained his relationship with Charlie, and so Charlie is determined to steal Red’s memories back. And she needs to move fast, because if Red doesn’t remember loving her, he just might be OK with Charlie being killed if it means his own freedom. Meanwhile, Mr. Punch, a terrifying Cabal leader who specializes in using shadow magic to possess other people’s bodies, has a job for Charlie: He wants her to find the culprit behind a terrible massacre that was attributed to a cult. He suspects that the people were actually killed by a Blight, and he doesn’t want the Cabals to face the blowback if the truth becomes public. Mr. Punch could do terrible things to Charlie if she fails, but if she succeeds, he’ll help Charlie and Red be free of the Cabals for good. The sophomore novel in a series is always tough, but this sequel proves that the second book can be even better than the first. Black turns the screws on the magical world she set up in Book 1, creating complicated political motives between Charlie and the Cabal leaders and making the question of what it means for a shadow, like Red, to have their own consciousness more interesting. Veteran con artist Charlie makes some truly brilliant moves, especially toward the end, where the last few chapters have one terrific surprise after the other.
A smart and highly original work of modern fantasy.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781250812223
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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