A gripping yarn for armchair adventurers.
A Canadian lawyer gets drawn into Mexico’s contemporary revolutionary struggle in this thriller.
In 2001, Ted Sorenson’s life is one that’s full of “bad decisions,” including a “bad marriage.” He reluctantly visits a spa in the Mexican countryside, looking for a new lease on life. En route, he meets and falls for an American woman who identifies herself as Barbara Jones, a brokerage firm’s bookkeeper. But at the border, she tells customs officials that her name is Bailey. When readers next see her, she’s purchasing a Smith & Wesson .30-caliber pistol and hollow-point bullets in Tecate. It turns out that she has some unfinished business involving Capitán Hernandez, a sadistic Mexican army general who led the 1997 slaughter of 45 villagers in Acteal, where Bailey was working at the time. She survived the attack but not before enduring unspeakable abuses, harrowingly revealed as the book progresses. Soon after Ted agrees to help her, he’s arrested; after Bailey breaks him out of jail, she discovers that there’s an international warrant out for his capture. The action escalates, and later Bailey kills a gunman and saves the life of Subcomandante Marcos, leader of the revolutionary Zapatistas, “a legend in his own time.” She then tries to get Marcos, who was also at Acteal, to kill Hernandez. Cuddy’s posthumously published debut novel is based on the actual Acteal massacre, and other figures, such as Marcos and the Zapatistas, are also drawn from real life. However, it also has a propulsive, noirish quality, as it tells the story of a good man and a woman with a tortured past who draws him into extraordinary events that test his mettle. Cuddy’s descriptions of the landscape, village culture, and the Zapatistas’ militant crusade all feel authentic. By comparison, Hernandez’s posturing villainy seems a bit overly broad, but Cuddy does devise credible, hard-earned fates for each of his vivid characters.
A gripping yarn for armchair adventurers.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9958689-0-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Chester House Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cheap fun: a guilty pleasure few monster-addicts will be able to resist.
A witty, grisly debut about the secret adventures of a Florida sociopath who murders only bad guys.
Dexter Morgan makes his living off the blood of the dead—literally. A “blood-splatter analyst” for the Miami Police Department, Dexter works only on the messiest cases, nearly all homicides and quite a few the work of serial killers. It takes one to know one, too, for Dexter has a very deep and well-guarded secret: He’s been bumping people off for years. Dexter knew from an early age that he was somehow different, and his father, Detective Harry Morgan, had picked up enough abnormal psychology on the job to recognize the signs. Harry tried to help Dexter out by suggesting that the boy might want to make a virtue of necessity by concentrating his murderous energies on the truly wicked people of the world—and Dexter agreed, beginning with the hospice nurse who was systematically overdosing Harry with morphine. From that day forward, Dexter (and his ghostly imaginary friend, the Dark Passenger) have done well by doing bad, disposing of a long line of pedophiles, killers, sadists, and thugs. A consummate professional, Dexter has never left a shred of incriminating evidence behind, but lately he’s begun to worry. A copycat killer is on the loose, leaving a string of victims strewn about the dark byways of Miami bearing the trademarks of Dexter’s handiwork in an obvious attempt to lure him out of hiding. Dexter can play his hand close to his chest, but unfortunately for him one of the cops assigned to the new cases is his sister Deborah, who knows nothing of Dexter’s extracurricular activities. Part of Dexter wants to come of the cold and play with this new guy on the block, but he feels an obligation to keep his sister from being implicated. It’s not just thieves, after all: There’s honor among murderers, too.
Cheap fun: a guilty pleasure few monster-addicts will be able to resist.Pub Date: July 27, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51123-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.
A lonely British schoolteacher falls for an American man incarcerated for the murder of a young woman. What could possibly go wrong?
Samantha, 31, is still reeling from a bad breakup when she discovers Framing the Truth: The Murder of Holly Michaels, an 18-year-old true-crime documentary about the killing of a young girl by then-18-year-old Dennis Danson, aka the suspected Red River Killer, who’s still on death row in Florida’s Altoona Prison. Sam writes to Dennis, and soon they’re declaring their love for each other. Sam flies to the U.S. to meet him, and although they’re separated by plexiglass, she knows that she’s found the love of her life. The chirpy Carrie, who co-produced and directed the first documentary, is Sam’s guide while she’s there, and Sam accompanies her while they film a new series about Dennis, A Boy from Red River. Sam and Dennis quickly marry when new evidence comes to light and Dennis is exonerated and released. Amid a whirlwind of talk shows, celebrity attention, and the new series premiere, married life isn’t quite what Sam had hoped for: intimacy is nonexistent, the already self-loathing Sam feels unloved and unwanted, and the appearance of Dennis’ clingy childhood friend Lindsay Durst sends Sam into a jealous fit. After Dennis’ father dies, they move into Dennis’ childhood home, and Sam begins to suspect he may be hiding something. After all, what actually happened to all those other missing girls? Refreshingly, Lloyd seems absolutely unconcerned with whether or not her characters are likable, and although a few British sayings ("round," “in hospital”) make their way into the dialogue of the American characters, her research into the aftereffects of long incarceration is obvious, and her portrait of an emotionally damaged woman feels spot-on.
A grim and unbearably tense debut chiller with an unexpected and utterly fitting finale.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-95240-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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