Lescroart plots so cleverly that he has you believing his split-level thriller is really a single foreshortened novel. The...
Defense attorney Dismas Hardy’s long streak of getting along with everyone on both sides of the courtroom ends with a whimper when his friend Wes Farrell loses his campaign for re-election as district attorney of San Francisco to a rising star who wastes no time changing the rules.
Trouble begins quietly enough, with the sudden, unprecedented absence of Hardy’s secretary, Phyllis McGowan, from the office. When she returns a few days later, she assures Hardy (Poison, 2018, etc.) that everything’s fine. But her arrest as accessory to the murder of thief/extortionist/pimp Hector Valdez says different. It turns out that (1) Phyllis has a younger brother, Adam, she’s never mentioned (small wonder, since until six weeks ago he was doing time for armed robbery); (2) she’s been serving as one of the conductors on a modern-day Underground Railroad that helps shelter undocumented people from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement; and (3) Celia Montoya, one of the most recent clients she sheltered from both Hector and the feds, has been arrested for killing Hector. Hardy could have sprung Phyllis from jail in an hour while Farrell was in the office, but new D.A. Ron Jameson, stung by Hardy’s support of Farrell, is determined to give him a hard time at every turn, and it isn’t long before Hardy, announcing, “I want him stopped,” is returning his salvos in kind. It would be bad enough if Jameson were only hard-nosed and hostile, but he’s hiding a secret that would be death to his political aspirations: Both he and his wife, Kate, have committed murder. Since Hardy is cherishing some long-standing secrets of his own, the story becomes a race to see which of them can pry the other’s skeletons out of the closet first in order to pre-emptively neutralize any counterattack.
Lescroart plots so cleverly that he has you believing his split-level thriller is really a single foreshortened novel. The perfect read for those who agree that “it’s only trouble if somebody’s shooting at you.”Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1573-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.
Some thrillers produce shivers, others trigger goose bumps; Cutter’s graphic offering will have readers jumping out of their skins.
Scoutmaster Dr. Tim Riggs takes his troop for their annual camping trip to Falstaff Island, an uninhabited area not far from their home on Prince Edward Island. The five 14-year-old boys who comprise Troop 52 are a diverse group: popular school jock, Kent, whose father is the chief of police; best friends Ephraim and Max, one the son of a petty thief who’s serving time in prison and the other the son of the coroner who also serves as the local taxidermist; Shelley, an odd loner with a creepy proclivity for animal torture and touching girls’ hair; and Newton, the overweight nerdy kid who’s the butt of the other boys’ jokes. When a skeletal, voracious, obviously ill man shows up on the island the first night of their trip, Tim’s efforts to assist him unleash a series of events which the author describes in gruesome, deliciously gory detail. Tom Padgett is the subject of a scientific test gone horribly wrong, or so it seems, and soon, the Scouts face a nightmare that worms its way into the group and wreaks every kind of havoc imaginable. With no way to leave the island (the boat Tom arrived on is disabled, and the troop was dropped off by a different boat), the boys fight to survive. Cutter’s narrative of unfolding events on the island is supplemented with well-placed interviews, pages from diaries, and magazine and newspaper articles, which provide answers to the reader in bits and pieces—but perhaps more importantly, it also delivers much-needed respites from the intense narrative as the boys battle for their lives on the island. Cutter (who created this work under a pseudonym) packs a powerful punch by plunging readers into gut-wrenching, explicit imagery that’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1771-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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