Great action in a colorful setting. This is fun!
The fifth Arliss Cutter thriller builds to breakneck speed over the Alaskan countryside.
Supreme Court Justice Charlotte Morehouse visits Alaska for a conference and is invited to stay and see some of the sights. “My idea of wild adventure is a foreign film with subtitles,” muses a nervous law clerk. “What if something were to happen?” As bad luck would have it, Russian mobster Maxim Volkov bears a deep grudge against the justice. “My plan is simple,” he says. “Kill the bitch judge who let my Nina die.” The veteran of Penal Colony Number 6 has earned his nickname, Kostolom—Bone Breaker—but now he’s dying and wants to avenge his ex-wife in the most public way possible. Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Arliss Cutter and Lola Teariki, his partner, are assigned to help protect Morehouse. The story reaches as far north as Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow, and is filled with local color to spark the imaginations of armchair travelers. Key to the action is the Alaska Railroad, which tourists normally ride to soak in hundreds of miles of magnificent scenery. Alas, the train is a confined space where the good, the bad, and the innocent have nowhere to go unless they jump off and risk death. Author Cameron is perhaps best known for his Tom Clancy novels, but the Arliss Cutter series looks equally good. Cameron himself was a U.S. marshal specializing in dignitary protection in the 1990s, eventually retiring as district chief in Alaska, giving him serious chops to write this appealing series. His hero, Arliss, is a sympathetic pro not given to smiles or trust, perhaps because of his brother Ethan’s death, which might have been murder. Ethan had also been married to the woman Arliss has loved since youth, so there are levels of pain. “I'm not in the trusting business,” he says. “I'm in the hunting-bad-men business.” The bad guys are a lot less nuanced—those Russki ruffians are flat-out evil as Volkov prepares his son to take over his criminal enterprise. But to kill Morehouse they'll have to get past some tough U.S. marshals.
Great action in a colorful setting. This is fun!Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781496737618
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
