A compelling portrait of crime and justice.
Springer’s historical novel follows the decades-long investigation of the murder of three boys.
When three boys, Ricky Henderson and brothers Mikey and Joey Schuler, vanish in 1950s Chicago and are later found dead in a nearby forest preserve, the city is thrown into a state of panic. A massive manhunt ensues, drawing in police from multiple jurisdictions. Despite sweeping up dozens of known pedophiles and other potential suspects, authorities fail to find the killer. The investigation is hampered by chaos at the crime scene, jurisdictional conflicts, and a flood of false leads, and the murders go unsolved for decades. Almost 40 years later, ATF investigator Nick Ferraro, who had known the victims as a child, stumbles upon an unexpected lead—a long-buried confession overheard by a criminal informant (“He told me he killed a couple of kids one time”). Teaming up with police officer A.J. Reid, the daughter of one of the original investigating officers, Nick begins to unravel a web of corruption and criminal ties that reach far beyond the boys’ murders. As the pair dig deeper, they discover connections to the so-called “Equestrian Mafia” and the shadowy world of Chicago’s organized crime. Readers fascinated by true-crime investigations and procedural detail will find much to engage with here. The novel excels in its depiction of midcentury police work and the ensuing media frenzy. The later sections, in which Nick and A.J. piece together decades-old clues, are equally compelling, offering both emotional weight and historical resonance. That said, what begins as a breathless, sharply paced thriller loses momentum—the minutiae of the original investigation can drag, and the courtroom sequences toward the end feel unnecessarily drawn out, dulling some of the tension built earlier in the book. Still, despite its pacing issues, the novel delivers an engrossing blend of crime, history, and moral reckoning.
A compelling portrait of crime and justice.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2026
ISBN: 9798868524421
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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