King’s latest novel proves he still adores the Travelers, and so will longtime fans.
This eighth volume of the Travelers series sees the con artist couple attempting to score diamonds while avoiding a showdown between White nationalists and the FBI.
Danny and Genie Briggs are enjoying a retreat in the Florida Keys; at least, those are the grifters’ current names as they prepare a fresh heist. Through a connection, they learn that the Orange Hill Cartel ships $10 million in diamonds twice a year, smuggling them out of Mumbai via stateside Hashemi Wholesale Carpets & Arts. The second-generation Indian American Hashemi siblings—married Zander and recently widowed Nadia—only dabble in crime, but they’re the perfect targets for the Travelers’ unique brand of subterfuge and seduction. Meanwhile, in Summerville, Iowa, White nationalists of the Fatherland Volk ready the deadly next step in their plot to eliminate foreign elements from the United States. Specifically, members Bruce MacBurn, Ray Johnston, and Joe Lang plan to acquire uranium and bomb several buildings, including the Denver Mint and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Joe, however, is actually a mole for the FBI’s Counterterrorism Task Force. As he allows the White nationalists to proceed with their plan—and potentially set themselves up for arrest on more severe charges—the Hashemis get tangled up in the scheme and realize they can no longer afford to be amateurs in the smuggling game. King’s fans will relish this smoothly set up con that, like others in the series, has just enough complexity to allow unexpected chaos to occur. His nuanced antiheroes steal the show, as when Danny, in conversation with Genie, expresses his chances of seducing Nadia with the chillingly confident line, “We’re already in love.” The Fatherland Volk members, meanwhile, despicably use racist epithets and discuss blaming their terrorism on Middle Eastern agents. Nadia’s sentimental characterization will keep readers distressed over her fate (“There was nothing wrong with wanting to be touched, wanting to feel that wild happiness, if only for a few moments”). This entry’s mellow finale, memorable cast, and emotional weight may have readers hoping for a direct sequel. That said, the author rarely offers readers what they expect.
King’s latest novel proves he still adores the Travelers, and so will longtime fans.Pub Date: May 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-952711-00-8
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Blurred Lines Press
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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