A so-so thriller whose premise and events are at once unnerving and deeply familiar.
The siblings of two young people gone missing in the Pacific Northwest join forces to track them down.
In the two years since 15-year-old Scarlett Faith disappeared, the police and even her older brother, Seattle coder Aidan Faith, have pretty much given up on finding her. Then, suddenly, a train passenger’s fleeting sight of a woman who looks just like Scarlett fleeing through the wilderness gives Aidan new hope and new energy. His visit to Eaglewood, near where his sister was spotted, produces nothing from local Sgt. Giglio, Mayor Christopher Hood, or Cody, the mayor’s thuggish fixer. But it does bring Aidan together with Lana Carrera, a graduate student seeking her vanished brother, Samuel, whom the authorities have assumed to be dead ever since his cellphone was found in the ruins of a forest fire. With no one to rely on but each other, the pair quickly bond as they discover traces of other missing persons and two neighboring groups the story has already provided glimpses into: Darryl Moses’ Sugar Magnolia Farm, whose economy depends on marijuana and prostitution, and the Cradle, whose eco-terrorist leader, Shannon Reinhardt, is running an even more radical operation. Unlike the searchers, the local countercultures share a relationship that’s purely transactional, and it’s not surprising that Edwards peppers the story with a high body count, including a surprising number of victims shot dead by the good guys, who seem just fine about it in the moment and even finer afterward.
A so-so thriller whose premise and events are at once unnerving and deeply familiar.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2790-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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