Take a deep breath and dive into this foreboding tale set on Rhode Island’s seashore.
A prolific author blends characters old and new in a thriller tied to the destructive powers of greed and jealousy.
Rice’s latest novel literally starts with a bang. Acclaimed artist Maddie Morrison—her level of fame is compared to that of Andy Warhol and Banksy—is fighting her way through a raging blizzard on her way to meeting someone outside a historic hotel situated on Rhode Island’s coastline. Within seconds, she’s shot execution-style, and the killer finds her 6-year-old daughter, CeCe, hiding in the snow. The killer kidnaps CeCe, then Maddie’s sister discovers her body, and the race to catch a killer and rescue CeCe explodes on the page. Rice fans will welcome the return of affable detective Conor Reid and Kate Woodward, his art historian girlfriend, who were featured in The Shadow Box (2021) and Last Day (2020), Rice’s two most recent thrillers. The vast number of people who might want Maddie dead becomes shockingly evident as the investigation progresses. A gold-digging soon-to-be ex-husband tops the list, but Rice keeps the suspect pool growing as the tense search for CeCe continues and white- and blue-collar criminals crawl out of the proverbial woodwork. Rice’s strengths as a storyteller pulse through this thriller, which she leavens with engaging observations on the art world, Rhode Island’s natural beauty, and, most of all, what it means to be a sister, one of her most popular themes. If her characters’ dialogue sometimes feels unnatural and stilted, their intense emotions and Rice’s propulsive plotting easily make up for it. Maddie’s murder is solved, but the motives and the complexity of the surprising conspiracy behind it will stay with readers.
Take a deep breath and dive into this foreboding tale set on Rhode Island’s seashore.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781542030199
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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