by Mary Higgins Clark & Alafair Burke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2015
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
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by Lisa Jackson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2012
Melodramatic and filled with a lot of pointless meanderings, but Jackson’s many fans will still enjoy it.
New York Times’ bestselling author Jackson puts her touch on this dark thriller and tale of forbidden romance.
Ava Church Garrison has it all. She’s beautiful, a near-genius and wealthy. Married to a handsome attorney and living in her family’s ancestral home on a small island off the coast of Washington, her future couldn’t be brighter, except for one small problem. It appears to everyone, including Ava, that she’s lost her mind. It all started when she lost her child. Two-year-old Noah wandered out of the house, and authorities believe he fell into the icy water and drowned. But Ava won’t accept this. She keeps searching for Noah, her searches prompted by sounds and visions she can’t control. No matter what she does, Ava keeps hearing Noah call for help and sees him toddling off toward the dock. To add to Ava’s issues, she has her loony-bin-worthy family living with her. Her cousin, Jewel-Anne, wheelchair-bound following an accident that killed Ava’s only brother, and the rest of her family treat her like she’s a basket case. Even her best friend (who's Jewel-Anne’s nurse) and the household help are creepy. In fact, everyone in the book qualifies as a character out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Plus, there’s also the little problem of the escaped madman, who may or may not still be hiding on the island, and Ava’s therapist, a woman she fears has grown too close to Ava’s husband, Wyatt. Soon, the landscape is littered with bodies, and Ava is rapidly finding herself the target of a police investigation. With only the help of a newly hired hand on the estate, she tries to prove she’s not crazy and find her son in the bargain. Jackson’s book is crammed with suspects and a palpable air of creepiness, but readers will spot a number of inconsistencies in the story and ultimately grow weary of the way she draws out the action with unnecessary dialogue and details.
Melodramatic and filled with a lot of pointless meanderings, but Jackson’s many fans will still enjoy it.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5857-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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by Heather Chavez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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