A worthy origin story featuring a driven, cat-loving, complex FBI agent.
An FBI profiler tasked to help solve a grisly murder gets push back from a hard-nosed detective in charge of the case in this procedural thriller.
In Lacefield’s latest book, FBI agent Frances “Frankie” Johnson and the Charlotte, North Carolina, police work to solve the brutal slashing, rape, and murder of 25-year-old Lianna Wakefield-Bradenton in her apartment. Lianna’s father, the local district attorney, is “close, like family,” with Detective Deke Deaton, the former Marine heading up the case. Deke quickly names Lianna’s playboy husband, Stewart Bradenton, as the prime suspect, but Frankie cautions her team leader not to rush to conclusions, “charging in like a bull on steroids.” “Justitia Extremum,” Latin for “justice finally,” written in blood on Lianna’s wall, tells Frankie the crime was personal, not random, and she questions if it could be revenge for a criminal conviction the victim’s father oversaw. One of the profiles Frankie develops matches personal trainer Joe Archuletta to a tee. Although supported by his girlfriend, he may have been Lianna’s lover. Then there’s Ripley, owner of the bar where Lianna was last seen; his eyelid twitches when Frankie interviews him. Deke admits Frankie’s profiles seem accurate, but in terms of an arrest, “he didn’t want anyone taking credit for what would be his ultimate victory.” Yet he enjoys eating Frankie’s homemade shrimp scampi and sitting on her couch with her cat as he notices that the “woman had curves.” In this engaging series opener featuring a kick-ass hero, a mix of ethnicities is represented. Frankie herself, almost 30 years old and said to scare off men, is a blend of African American, French Cajun, and White European. Her father was a mean drunk, and her close colleague and confidant is gay, handsome Ben Andrews. Conversations ring true, as does police work. But giving one suspect a sideline as a professional knife thrower is a bit too much on the nose, and thriller aficionados may discover the killer early on.
A worthy origin story featuring a driven, cat-loving, complex FBI agent.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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