A lively, violent, and enveloping romp in the American Southwest.
In Talley’s thriller, a private investigator attempting to help an old flame gets caught up in a violent investigation in New Mexico.
Jackson Bardo is a “California private investigator” with a military background. Bardo was a bomb expert in the Iraq War, and he still has a knack for explosives. At the beginning of the story, Bardo is contacted by his ex-girlfriend, Jenny Dawson, who says that she’s in trouble and needs money. Her predicament comes as no surprise to Bardo, as Jenny has shown a “continued reliance on liquor and drugs as she [rushes] toward forty.” Despite some misgivings, Bardo heads to New Mexico to offer his help. But Jenny disappears, and Bardo becomes involved in something much bigger than a favor to a troubled ex-girlfriend. Enter local Santa Fe detective Diego Juarez; Bardo knows Juarez through a mutual acquaintance, and after Juarez helps Bardo out of a sticky situation, the two work together on a case involving the body of a dead girl. The deceased in question happens to have a similar tattoo on her ankle to another girl’s, who is missing. The adventure rolls along quickly as vehicles explode, suspects are interrogated, and bullets fill the air—as one character observes, “New Mexico is still wild country.” Just as it seems things are resolved in this untamed region, the story takes another turn. The plot moves briskly (from Jenny’s predicament to other problems) as various new characters are introduced, including a park ranger who parties with mysterious campers, a first cousin of a district attorney, and the girlfriend of a tattoo artist; keeping track of the many people who come and go is not always easy. Still, the tale delivers quite a punch as Bardo and company storm their way through the Land of Enchantment.
A lively, violent, and enveloping romp in the American Southwest.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798999755865
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Lazarus Media Publications LLC
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.
An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine.
Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she’s a “no-frills” person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship’s departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend’s atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that’s nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something’s off, but she can’t put together the pieces. That’s because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who’s patient and sensible to the end, you’ll just have to wait.
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780062998101
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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