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: Feb. 1, 2026
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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