An intriguing but uneven crime tale.
In this World War II thriller, a British detective tries to investigate a series of possibly connected murders that involve espionage and illicit art dealing.
In 1942, DCI Frank Merlin of Scotland Yard has his hands full—London is brimming with American soldiers and the crimes they often commit and stymied by the fact that the United States military is permitted to autonomously govern its own affairs. A series of murders—at least one of which may have been committed by an American soldier—occurs in quick succession. Tomas Barboza, a Spaniard working for MI6, is found murdered, his throat slit. Then Frederick Vermeulen is shot in the head neatly, a mark of professional precision. Vermeulen was also a British spy and had infiltrated the Germans as a double agent. Moreover, he was brokering a shady art deal for Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, an extravagantly rich oil tycoon. The art in question: two authentic works by Leonardo da Vinci almost certainly stolen from a Jewish family by the Nazis. The seller is Leo Van Buren, whose “business empire was taken over lock, stock and barrel” by the Germans after they “swept into Holland.” Van Buren turns up in the Thames, another murder victim. In this ambitious tale, readers are challenged to connect the dots between these different crimes which may or may not be entangled within a single, conspiratorial skein. Ellis constructs a tableau of London during the war that is as captivatingly vivid as it is edifying, one riven by crime and strained by the presence of foreigners not quite subject to British law. In addition, the author deftly depicts the luridly murky art market that emerged during the war, one perfect for cultural predators. But the plot is overly complicated—readers will need an Excel spreadsheet to properly track all the characters and the subplots to which they belong. This narrative density becomes so prohibitive that it finally hampers the story’s energy and momentum.
An intriguing but uneven crime tale.Pub Date: May 19, 2022
ISBN: 9781786159885
Page Count: 413
Publisher: Headline Accent
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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