A captivating financial thriller that works despite some daunting jargon.
A retired computer genius is called into action when the world financial markets are at risk in Mattison’s thriller.
In the year 2027, a year after his abrupt departure from the ICARUS project, Rory O’Connor is living off the grid in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He’s lost his best friend, Peter Costello, in a violent robbery in Chicago, and left his job and the city—his days in international finance and intrigue are behind him. Or so he thinks. As ICARUS, the game-changing quantum AI platform that operates the world’s financial markets (“Co-located servers, fiber networks, and complex algorithms had created a stock market run more by machines than by men or women”), launches its final phase, some unusual activity online lures Rory back into action. A sometimes-convoluted narrative finds Rory working with Peter’s sister, Mia, along with Rory and Peter’s former boss, Milton McGrady, the CEO of a company called Celtic Capital, to beat bad guys from China, Russia, and India to the contents of an encrypted thumb drive left by Peter. The stakes include dire consequences not only for the individuals involved but for the world financial order as well. Rory and Mia fight the good fight around the world, mostly in Switzerland and Chicago. Along the way, of course, they fall for each other, increasing the tension when they both get into life-threatening situations at the Basel headquarters of ICARUS, a complex containing a mainframe called Quoz. Despite its challenging-to-parse subject matter—including AI, the financial world, politics of world powers, crypto-currency, and the blockchain—the novel is an exciting read. The author has created a likeable and relatable hero in Rory, and Mia is a worthy sidekick. Together, they offset the book’s financial and political mumbo-jumbo with big doses of humor and some exciting action sequences. Readers’ enjoyment won’t be stymied much by the lack of an MBA or intimate knowledge of finance; Mattison explains enough for readers to keep up and knows how to spin an exciting yarn.
A captivating financial thriller that works despite some daunting jargon.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798888452028
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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.
