Fans of crime fiction will love this one.
Nottingham forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven investigates a mass migrant murder in his fourth outing.
Cyrus and his friend Evie Cormac—born Adina Osmani—are enjoying a day at the beach when a woman screams that someone is floating in the ocean. Cyrus swims to the rescue, but he’s too late. Then more bodies float in, 17 in all with but one survivor. They had come from the Middle East, desperately trying to reach British soil. But miles out in the English Channel, another boat had rammed into their inflatable dinghy, sinking it. Who? Why? Was it an accident? Was it xenophobia, a warning to keep foreigners out? Or does it go deeper? A mysterious ferryman is said to control the human trafficking across the channel, but most people think him a bogeyman, the stuff of ghost stories. Then the lone survivor is murdered; how will police ever learn what happened now? In Scotland, Cyrus is told, “Oh, that’s a dangerous beastie, the truth, a monster in the loch.” Cyrus and Evie narrate alternating fast-paced chapters that will rivet the reader’s attention. Both have backgrounds you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Cyrus’ older brother murdered their parents and two sisters. Evie, from Albania, lost her family and has been sexually trafficked and tortured. “Coin-sized lesions” from cigarette burns pock her legs and abdomen. Cyrus fostered her, and they have become good friends. The interplay between the two main characters makes the story stand out. She’s attracted to him, but the feeling is not mutual. He cares deeply about her, but he’ll never violate his professional ethics. So she’s both jealous and happy knowing that he’s “bumping uglies” with a more appropriate woman. In his words, Evie is “damaged and self-destructive and a pathological liar, but she is also funny and feisty and intelligent and empathetic.” There’s also a great secondary character from Zimbabwe who deserves a role in Cyrus and Evie’s next adventure.
Fans of crime fiction will love this one.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668030998
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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