A taut, often unnerving procedural with a memorable heroine and villain.
An FBI profiler’s past may link to a murderer’s in Regan’s (The Bones She Buried, 2019, etc.) thriller.
Agent Kassidy Bishop of the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit is on the hunt for a serial killer. At each crime scene, he leaves a message that reads “for you.” His M.O. is unusual in other ways, as well: The bodies show indications of torture that occurred after the victims were already dead. Kassidy suspects that they’re revenge killings of some kind, given the murderer’s recurring message. The novel alternates perspectives between first- and third-person, giving readers an early introduction to the killer, Wyatt Anderton, who’s obsessed with Kassidy and secretly spies on her. It’s revealed early on that, five years before, serial rapist Nico Sala tortured Kassidy, and that the resulting brain damage adversely affected her long-term memory. Wyatt, meanwhile, sometimes has blackouts and can’t remember all of his murders. As his control slips further away, he becomes an even greater threat—and Kassidy could be his next victim. As the killer’s identity and motive become clear, Regan concentrates her story less on the mystery than she does on the characters. The absorbing protagonist, who also lost her twin sister in an apparent suicide, is understandably reluctant to get close to anyone. Her skills are without question, however; as she and her partner, Agent TK Bennett, profile the killer, readers know that their insights are generally spot-on. Revelations about Wyatt’s past effectively humanize him, as both he and his younger sister endured abuse. But when he loses stretches of time, it can be terrifying; at one point, for instance, he suddenly finds himself in front of a victim with no memory of how he got there. Regan’s steadily paced narrative rarely slows down, and it delivers effective twists. Readers will likely be able to predict one of the more significant plot turns, but the author saves one for the end that they may not see coming.
A taut, often unnerving procedural with a memorable heroine and villain.Pub Date: June 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9968882-9-5
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Prodorutti Books
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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