Methodical, efficient, brand-name genre thrills guaranteed not to frighten the horses.
Laurie Moran and the crew of Under Suspicion (The Cinderella Murder, 2014, etc.) revisit the 5-year-old case of the bride who vanished hours before she was supposed to walk down the aisle.
Despite some understandable last-minute jitters on both sides, Amanda Pierce had been looking forward eagerly to joining hands in marriage with attorney Jeff Hunter at the splishy Grand Victoria Hotel in Palm Springs. Instead she went down in tabloid history as the runaway bride who disappeared the night before the ceremony. Now her mother, Sandra Pierce, wants Under Suspicion, which specializes in dramatizing, and incidentally solving, cold cases on television, to reopen the mystery. Producer Laurie gets Walter Pierce, Sandra’s workaholic ex, on board, along with bridesmaids Kate Fulton, Meghan White, and Charlotte Pierce, the bride’s older sister, and groomsmen Nick Young, Austin Pratt, and Henry Pierce, the bride’s brother. Complications have already arisen before the Under Suspicion crew even arrives in Florida. Jeff is now married to Meghan, whom he had dated briefly before she introduced him to Amanda back at Colby College, the school the wedding party had all attended. Bill Walker, the wedding photographer, suddenly recalls that the police never questioned his intern, Jeremy Carroll, who, then as now, seemed a little bit off. Laurie can’t quite satisfy herself why Amanda would have left her modest belongings to Sandra Pierce, Henry’s daughter, but her $2 million trust fund to the fiance she’d just gotten to sign a prenup. And news about the strangling of Colby student Carly Romano back in the wedding party’s college days hangs like a dark cloud over the increasingly tense Grand Victoria.
Methodical, efficient, brand-name genre thrills guaranteed not to frighten the horses.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0855-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Lots of frenzied flipping back and forth for readers who like to figure out the puzzle.
Witnessing a suicide proves almost fatal for the witness herself.
Shay Miller would not have been on that subway platform had she not taken the 22 seconds required to tie up her ponytail. Because she did, she is the sole witness to a suicide that changes her life. But is she stalking the friends of the dead girl, or are they stalking her? It seems to be both, as Hendricks and Pekkanen (An Anonymous Girl, 2019) unfold another one of their intricately plotted, female-focused thrillers. Rage about rape and sexual abuse underlies the plot as Google searches, dating apps, and hacked phones move it forward, making this a thriller of the moment. Here, the evil men are on the sidelines—the women are pitted against each other in a complicated game of cat and mouse. Shay, who is lonely, insecure, and broke, is easily drawn in by the cool and confident Moore sisters, who ply her with beauty makeovers, a “sea-blue leather purse,” “a sugar cookie scented Nest candle, with notes of Tahitian vanilla and bourbon infused caramel,” and, most devastatingly, the illusion of friendship. But socially awkward, highly observant Shay, who makes her way through life by recording statistics and factoids about human nature in a “Data Book,” can only be fooled so long. “Between 73 and 79 percent of homicides during a 15-year period were committed by offenders known to the victim,” she notes. Good thing to know. The authors dole out clues in a series of interlocking flashbacks; finally we get the detail that makes the pieces come together, with just a few little issues to argue about in your book club.
Lots of frenzied flipping back and forth for readers who like to figure out the puzzle.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20203-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Everything is not quite as it seems in this quick, satisfying read.
A woman is on the run with cash, a burner phone, and plans that have taken most of a year to build. But can she escape?
Beth Murphy, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, has planned every detail of her departure meticulously; from her new name to her new appearance and car, she is leaving nothing to chance. But the person she is fleeing continues to be an overwhelming presence in her mind, and she expects to see him hiding in every shadow. He has trained her well through years of abuse, and she knows that he will find her—the only question is when. Her jumpiness during the days and terror-soaked nights are hardly going unnoticed, and it becomes obvious to her new co-workers and rooming-house neighbors that she is not who she says she is. From her new life as a cleaner in Atlanta, Beth obsessively tracks the media coverage of a missing woman from Pine Bluff, Sabine Hardison, and the police’s search for her. Sabine is a successful realtor who disappeared one afternoon while her husband was away on business, but as the police dig deeper, it becomes clear that this was not a happy marriage. Suspense author Belle (Three Days Missing, 2018, etc.) switches among three points of view as the story unfolds, giving insights into Beth and her efforts to re-create herself; Sabine’s husband, Jeffrey, who is picking up the pieces left behind by his wife's disappearance while coming to terms with the aggressive publicity around his marriage’s shortcomings; and the detective, Marcus, who has been assigned to find out where Sabine has gone. Is Beth actually Sabine? Is she not? Are those continuity errors the whisper of red herrings or just the different ways multiple characters perceive the same events? An unexpected ending hinges on information missing from the story.
Everything is not quite as it seems in this quick, satisfying read.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0859-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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