by Michael Fields ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014
This grisly thriller will sink its teeth right in you.
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Fields’ sequel to Twin River (2013) sees a killer for hire enter the lives of two troubled Pennsylvania teens.
Polecat Hollow, near Alexandria, Pennsylvania, is home to high school sophomores Matt Henry and Connor Brooks. It’s 1980, and the boys have had trouble with local bullies Cain and Abel Tower as well as other assorted felons (see Twin River). Insisting to any inquiring party that his father, a bank manager, is on vacation, Matt decides to hire some protection for himself and the bank. A newspaper ad leads him to a man named Wesley Palladin of the agency Have Weapons Will Travel. Unbeknownst to Matt, Palladin is a contract killer for the mob, embroiled in a complex bait-and-switch operation that has other killers gunning for him. Cain and Abel, meanwhile, are terrorizing a teen named Wayne Wilson, whose sister, Becky, Cain has impregnated. Elsewhere in the region—which is possessed by a violent legacy dating back to the mid-18th century—a vile gang of kidnappers is using high school girls to make pornographic videos. Once drawn together, Matt and Palladin learn just how alike they are as they wage war against the various forms of evil that nearby Blood Mountain seems to inspire. Snaring readers once more in the sinister rural setting of Twin River, author Fields proves himself a macabre, versatile storyteller. The tone of his sprawling narrative darkens immediately, beginning on a river in late ’60s Florida. On this fishing trip–turned-murder, young Palladin’s father teaches him that “The best and the strongest destroy and survive.” Fields’ gift for detailing violence is always at the ready: “Pulled by the treble [fish] hooks, the man’s skin stretched outward.” Yet the descriptions of nature are lush, and literary references to Catcher in the Rye are a welcome surprise: “A person needs to catch himself first before he can catch others.” If possible, readers should tackle the previous novel beforehand for better context surrounding characters’ relationships. Standing alone, however, this tale remains incredibly effective.
This grisly thriller will sink its teeth right in you.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491744468
Page Count: 318
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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