An intriguing thriller with complex characters.
A troubled detective tries to find answers in a web of lies, deceit, and corruption after his adopted son goes missing in Polelle’s novel.
When presidential candidate Franklin Dexter Walker is shot and killed, the U.S. Secret Service agent in charge deems Detective Jim Murphy irresponsible for not protecting him. Feeling like a failure, he seeks out his older sister, Katie, who’s always helped him when he’s been down in the past. Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of Promethean Pharma, Sebastian Senex, is on a mission to cure his Huntington’s disease and also get rid of gangsters that threaten the city of Chicago. After he’s humiliated by a viral video of a group robbing him outside a club, he seeks revenge and feels compelled “to save his city and his country” from gangs. The solution to his problems lies with Angelo Mora, his physician, who’s on the brink of discovering a way to reverse aging. The lives of Jim and Sebastian become inexplicably tied together when Jim’s adopted son, Santiago, is kidnapped. Jim uncovers lies, corruption, and obstacles at every step as he tries to seek justice and redeem himself, while Sebastian burns bridges as his greed and ambition grow. Polelle, the author of The Mithras Conspiracy(2019), returns with a gripping novel filled with action and plot revelations. He does an exemplary job of connecting different players’ arcs and perspectives and keeps readers engaged with deep characterization. For example, Jim is effectively shown to have a stubborn, self-righteous, and pessimistic attitude and strained relationships with his male family members, but he also wants the very best for his loved ones. Sebastian, on the other hand, is always trying to put himself one step ahead of everyone else, and as a result, he holds onto resentment and trusts no one. He also looks down on his daughter, Daisy, who lacks street smarts and is enamored with the son of a mobster who works for Sebastian. It all adds up to a novel with twists and turns that will keep readers hooked.
An intriguing thriller with complex characters.Pub Date: July 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-96-008632-0
Page Count: 333
Publisher: Lido Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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