A page-turner chock full of lies and betrayals and a very creepy mother-son relationship.
Laurence Fitzsimons has a mother who’s determined to control everything, and everyone, around her—even if she has to kill to do it.
When 22-year-old Annie Doyle is murdered, it’s ugly and sudden. Her life ends in 1980 on a Dublin beach at the hands of Lydia and Andrew Fitzsimons, for reasons not immediately made clear. Lydia doesn’t feel at all bad about the deed: “I like to think I did the girl a kindness, like putting an injured bird out of its misery. She did not deserve such kindness.” Lydia is disillusioned with Andrew after more than 21 years of marriage, and although they live in a lovely estate called Avalon, they are nearly penniless because of Andrew’s bad investments. All Lydia really cares about is her 17-year-old son, Laurence, whose every move she attempts to control. Laurence is overweight and bullied at school, but he’s also observant and not at all stupid. His parents are acting squirrelly, and he soon suspects one or both of them had a hand in Annie’s death. Meanwhile, Annie’s sister, Karen, is convinced something bad has happened to Annie, who has always been troubled: At 16 she became pregnant, was sent to a home for unwed mothers, and was forced to give up her baby girl, Marnie. It left her forever changed. Karen begins investigating on her own, eventually becoming intimately tied to the Fitzsimons. Like Unraveling Oliver (2017), this is a whydunit, not a whodunit, and the real meat lies in Nugent’s exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and what could drive a person to murder, told through first-person accounts from Lydia, Karen, and Laurence. Lydia is a Gothic villain for the ages, and Annie is sympathetically drawn; a letter she wrote to Marnie, riddled with misspellings, is heartbreaking. Society failed Annie, and her victimization never ended, even after her death.
A page-turner chock full of lies and betrayals and a very creepy mother-son relationship.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6777-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
Like the successful screenwriter that he is, Hawley piles on enough intrigues and plot complications to keep you hooked even...
In the latest by TV writer and novelist Hawley (The Good Father, 2012, etc.), a struggling artist becomes a hero twice—first by saving a young boy’s life, then by outsmarting the anchor of a Fox-like conservative TV network.
A small charter plane mysteriously crashes into the water off Martha’s Vineyard, leaving only two survivors: the painter Scott Burroughs and JJ, the young son of the network owner who chartered the flight. In a well-turned rescue sequence, Scott braves the waves and sharks and makes dry land with JJ on his back. From there, the book is part whodunit and part study of Scott’s survivor’s guilt. Flashbacks trace the back story of each doomed passenger: network head David Bateman and his wife, Maggie, who may have had a thing for Scott; financier Ben Kipling, about to be tried for laundering terrorist money; flight attendant Emma Lightner, who recently jilted co-pilot Charlie Busch. While the rescue team works to figure out who crashed the plane, Scott struggles to get his bearings—no small feat when wealthy socialite Layla Mueller is trying hard to get him into bed and when O’Reilly-like anchorman Bill Cunningham is harassing him for an interview.
Like the successful screenwriter that he is, Hawley piles on enough intrigues and plot complications to keep you hooked even if you can spot most of them a sea mile away.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-6178-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
This flight never gets off the ground. Hopefully Bell will return to form next time.
An airport meet-cute goes south in Bell’s (Somebody I Used to Know, 2018, etc.) new thriller.
Poor Joshua Fields. All he does is travel for his job as a real estate developer with his father’s company. He’s tired, bored, and ready to settle down. Enter Morgan Reynolds. After meeting Joshua at an airport gift shop in Atlanta, she agrees to get a drink with him. Who is this tall, ridiculously beautiful woman in the hat and giant sunglasses? Joshua plans to find out. After a drink and a bit of conversation, Joshua is properly starry-eyed, and when Morgan plants a passionate kiss on him, he’s truly a goner. So, it’s a bummer when she firmly tells him she has to go and that they won’t be seeing each other again. Most people would count the experience as an oddity and get on with their lives, but not our Joshua. He throws caution to the wind and changes his flight, but Morgan pretends not to know Joshua when he confronts her on the plane, making him feel like an “aggressive creep, a stalker, a weirdo.” Well, if the shoe fits. When he touches down in Nashville, Joshua sees Morgan’s face on TV, and when he looks her up on Facebook, he’s stunned to see a post headlined “Have You Seen Morgan? Missing Person.” After telling his story to the airport police, he decides that Morgan surely needs his help and sets off to find her. Meanwhile, in Laurel Falls, Kentucky, Detective Kimberly Givens is on the hunt for Giles Caldwell, a prominent local businessman who has disappeared, and the trail leads to Morgan Reynolds. Nearly everyone involved in this paper-thin thriller, with the exception of Detective Givens, seems to be suffering from an alarming lack of common sense, and they’re not nearly interesting enough to make up for it. Bell makes a lot of hay over Joshua’s need to break free of his everyday grind, but that doesn’t excuse his going to such great lengths to follow a woman after she repeatedly brushes him off. Readers desperately hoping to be rewarded with a few shocking revelations upon reaching the end of this dull cat-and-mouse game will be disappointed.
This flight never gets off the ground. Hopefully Bell will return to form next time.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-440-00086-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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