A trim, gripping, casually brutal small-town epic.
The National Defense Agency investigates murder and corruption in this Midwestern noir.
Early one morning, Grace Abernathy walks her dog in Mercy Creek, Iowa. She lets the collie off his leash in Peterbo County Park, and he begins sniffing around some maintenance sheds. In a poorly covered grave, the dog finds five bodies. The victims are a local group of friends—Pat Green, Susan Grisel, Mike Belmont, PhilipRichards,and Billy Cannon—who worked for R&G Construction. When media outlets report on the mass grave, Henry Granger, CEO of R&G, grows concerned. His company, which trucks guns and drugs along Interstate-35 toward Mexico, had been trying to eliminate a mole. Granger answers to Mr. Juarez in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, who must now be reassured that his American partners are competent. The murder victims included an undercover FBI agent. The National Defense Agency sends Capt. KD Thorne and Warrant Officer Jeffery Blunt to run a “parallel investigation” of Mercy Creek’s law enforcement and discover corruption. When the agents arrive, Sheriff James Crowder cooperates fully despite being on Granger’s payroll. The sheriff’s son, Jimmy, was the only member of the group of friends working for R&G left alive. Jimmy suspects a coverup and only wants justice. Can Thorne and Blunt use him to expose Mercy Creek’s violent underside? This second volume of King’s KD Thorne series is a ballet of tension and rough justice. A journalistic lens captures small-town America’s downward slide, as the economically vulnerable Mercy Creek needs R&G’s warehouse to survive. Thrilling escalation begins as Granger tries to apply pressure to the determined agents. Thorne is barely fazed when his goons kidnap and torture her, describing it as being “rode hard, put away wet.” Blunt, a Black agent, feels an extra touch of horror when a deputy pulls over the protagonists’ car. Knowing it’s a setup, he tells Thorne: “I’m going to do my best to keep from being killed.” In the final third, morally gray characters deliver satisfying moments, and the author’s winning agents go big to prove they can’t be trifled with. A sweet closing scene brings these action heroes back down to Earth.
A trim, gripping, casually brutal small-town epic.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-952711-09-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Blurred Lines Press
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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