A twisty tale flush with suspicious characters who keep the reader guessing.
Sanders’ thriller centers around the return of a long-lost woman in England.
Ellie is a hairdresser in the small English town of Lindleton; she grew up there, and she knows the place well. Some 12 years prior, her childhood friend Carla Goodwin ran away from home at the age of 16. Although Carla reportedly made it to Liverpool, Ellie has always suspected something was off about the whole situation. In the present day, Ellie has plans to marry Carla’s brother Nick, and the couple lives with Carla’s mother Marjorie in the very home in which Carla was raised. The family has not heard much of anything from Carla over the years—naturally, they are surprised when a woman claiming to be Carla shows up at their home. Ellie is immediately suspicious, convinced the woman is a con artist. This “Fake Carla” (as Ellie refers to her) is vague about what she has been doing for the past 12 years, but this doesn’t seem to bother anyone but Ellie. As Ellie refuses to back down, people in town start to think that she is crazy—but perhaps there is more to the story than the average Lindleton resident realizes. The narrative maintains a compelling mystery: Could this person really be Carla? Just as it seems Ellie is completely wrong and has perhaps gone too far, something will occur to make readers wonder if maybe she was right all along. It’s difficult to know who to trust; perhaps Ellie, who narrates most of the story, is not so reliable after all. This tension leaves readers little choice but to keep turning the pages. Some of the dialogue along the way is not altogether imaginative—characters deliver typical thriller lines like “You won’t get away with this” without a hint of irony. Still, there are always more discoveries to be made as the intrigue deepens; the arrival of Carla (or Fake Carla?) in town is just the beginning of the drama.
A twisty tale flush with suspicious characters who keep the reader guessing.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781763659902
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Furphies Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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