An engaging tale of murder, politics, and good old boys being no good at all.
His discovery of a bullet-ridden body steers a former Arizona homicide detective to resume investigating, even if it leads to corruption at the highest state level.
In Bacon’s fifth installment of a mystery series, ex-homicide detective Lyle Deming finds the body of a caterer in the parking lot of the Nostalgic City theme park in Arizona. Working as a cab driver at the park to escape the stress of his former occupation, Lyle discovers the body the morning after the place’s informal “gay day.” The killing is personal to Lyle, as his adopted daughter, Sam, a college student, is a good friend of the deceased’s daughter. Because the caterer serviced gay weddings and the park just had the large LGBTQ+ gathering, the murder might have been a hate crime, but Gov. Rod Gudgel disagrees, saying, “The woke media are making too much out of this. Just a random shooting.” Gudgel soon starts antagonizing park officials and, without reason, labels Nostalgic City rides as potentially unsafe, creating a nightmare situation for Kate Sorensen, the park’s public relations director and Lyle’s girlfriend. Known for his unbridled hate speech against marginalized groups, Gudgel and his minions threaten to divide Arizona society. The governor’s connection with a Saudi company called Ecoperi, which owns land in Arizona, raises even more concerns. To help her friends Lyle and Kate bring down Gudgel, 30-something park Vice President Drenda Adair infiltrates the governor’s campaign office, getting far more than she bargained for. The fairly predictable story is perhaps a bit too on the nose, given the country’s current political climate. That said, the novel is a rapid-paced, engrossing thriller. Although the lucid book works effectively as a stand-alone mystery, reading the series in order would be helpful as the backstories of the characters are not thoroughly fleshed out. The conversations certainly seem authentic, but touches of humor are missing; there is a lot of talk about commercial planning, shooting ranges, and beer.
An engaging tale of murder, politics, and good old boys being no good at all.Pub Date: March 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798218515942
Page Count: 404
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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