Brisk, terse, and diverting.
Thwarting what seems like a run-of-the-mill holdup thrusts an ex-Marine into an international cybercrime plot.
What seems simple and predictable turns complex and surprising in this thriller, the sixth in the Peter Ash series. The swiftly paced, action-dominated plot rushes headlong from its outset. Freelance journalist June Cassidy alerts series protagonist Ash to a bearded and “weird-looking dude” as she, Ash, and his sidekick, Lewis, meet for an outdoor coffee near the Milwaukee Public Market on a sunny October afternoon. The bearded man of interest holds up another man with an assault rifle and Ash tries to intervene. Ash momentarily throws the gunman off with two well-tossed honeycrisps, but not before the gunman takes a phone from his quarry and then escapes on an electric bike, leaving behind a pair of shades. “You don’t steal a phone with an AK-74,” Ash says, his curiosity about the incident compelling him to find out what the attacker was up to. Ash works with handicaps. An ex-Marine veteran of the Iraq War, he suffers from PTSD. Worse, the FBI wants him for the murder of a government employee Ash didn’t commit, so the shaggy-haired Ash must work out of police sight. Ash doesn’t work alone. Cassidy joins him, bringing keen investigative reportorial skills to the pursuit that do as much to solve the case as Ash and Lewis do with their athletics—this turns out not to be the macho-male dominated thriller it first seems to be. When the house Ash and Cassidy share is burgled, the sunglasses from the crime scene go missing. Then Cassidy is menaced by a thug in a van. To find out what they’ve stumbled on, they traverse the city, which Petrie describes sharply. The pair grab at straws—sharply sketched characters with seemingly tangential connections to the case—until a source offers a major clue: The holdup near the market may be connected to a Russian hacking attempt.
Brisk, terse, and diverting.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-53547-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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