A taut, character-driven story of finding purpose and resolve in an unlikely place.
In Mahoney’s debut novel, a New York City cop embarks on a United Nations mission in war-torn Kosovo in the early aughts.
Following family tradition, NYPD officer JB Byrne aims to be a plainclothes detective. But a couple of crucial mistakes, like a body disappearing from a crime scene he was babysitting, convinces him he’s not investigator material. He falls back on his other passion: chocolate. Opening his own chocolate store requires a stake, and he determines that his best money-making option is a year-long UN mission in Kosovo. He arrives in September of 2000, after the country’s devastating late-’90s war, and takes on the position of field-training officer. While on patrol, he has his first run-in with Ardian Gashi, a former schoolteacher who’d only reluctantly joined the Kosovo Liberation Army to fight Serbian forces. Gashi had led a KLA hit squad, and now, despite the KLA’s post-war dissolution, continues to head a death-dealing splinter group. JB may have come for the easy paycheck, but he considers helping the UN investigation team take down Gashi (“whatever it takes”). Mahoney’s brisk tale shines an illuminating spotlight on both JB and Gashi; JB doesn’t quite get the relatively calm Kosovo assignment he hoped for, and Gashi primarily takes part in the KLA to ensure his younger brother stays away from combat. The characters shine in lighter moments, too—JB visits Switzerland mostly for the chocolate, and his detective brother, Kevin, can’t seem to remember that JB is in Kosovo, not Bosnia. The author vividly depicts Kosovo in 2000-2001, describing an icy, “bitterly cold” January and lingering signs of destruction in the wake of NATO bombings. While the action never takes over the plot, there are tense, explosive turns (one involving a bazooka) and an effective buildup to JB’s faceoff against Gashi.
A taut, character-driven story of finding purpose and resolve in an unlikely place.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2025
ISBN: 9798218586393
Page Count: 205
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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