A well-plotted mystery with sure-footed series potential.
A chief of police is pulled back into a 35-year-old cold case involving his sister’s murder.
The attempted robbery of a Walgreens in Richmond, Virginia, lasts less than a minute, but it has world-shaking implications for Williamsburg Chief of Police Charlie Gates. A partial print pulled off of the weapon used in the bungled robbery matches a partial print logged as evidence in the Matoaka murders case. During six months in the late ’80s, there were four murders in the vicinity of Lake Matoaka. One of the victims was Gates’ sister, a college student. He assigns Luis “Quags” Millares to lead the investigation. Quags is a former Miami homicide detective, making him the only one on Gates’ squad who has worked an actual murder case. The two make a good (and good-humored) team, and the case’s high-stakes twists unfold at a deliberate pace. The first revelation comes from the surveillance tape of the attempted robbery and the suspect’s takedown by another customer. Could the good Samaritan be connected to the Matoaka murders? The investigation leads Quags and Gates to Camp Peary, the local training facility run by the CIA. It is the town’s major employer. When Quags mentions that the worst-case scenario will be that they “ruffle a few feathers,” Gates responds, “If you think ruffling feathers is a worst-case scenario, you need to work on your imagination.” There are fewer mystery hooks more compelling than a cold case that heats up, and Gilleo, whose last outing was Favors and Lies (2020), expertly sets the wheels in motion for a twisty procedural while deftly laying the foundation for further mysteries (more Det. Sandra Brooks, please). Quags and Gates engage in some heartfelt bonding. Gates has been waiting “a lifetime” for closure and justice for his sister; Quags was shot five times by a drug cartel while working in Miami. Some of their exchanges move the story along; others put the brakes on when readers will want things to move. Still, this doesn’t dampen the effect of an intriguing, hardheaded duo investigating a knotty case.
A well-plotted mystery with sure-footed series potential.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9990472-6-2
Page Count: 378
Publisher: 2020 Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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.
