A moving novel, albeit more theatrical than thrilling.
A band of Jewish vigilantes formed out of the crucible of World War II attempt to stop a neo-Nazi group from rising to political power in America.
In 1944, Ben Zvi Kantorwicz, barely a teenager, escapes Auschwitz, though his sisters and parents never make it out alive. Longing for vengeance, he becomes one of the founding members of Aleph Bet, an “organization born out of the ashes of Auschwitz and committed to the discovery and punishment of all surviving Nazis.” Over the years, the group grows from a ragtag band of soldiers in the woods of Krakow into an “international brotherhood of Jews.” One of their principal missions is to find and capture Helmut Mussman, the commandant of Auschwitz and its “stoker of the ovens” when Ben Zvi was imprisoned there. Now, in 1964, he’s the leader of Thor, a neo-Nazi group with plans to take over the state of Colorado. Shabel’s portrayal of him is as melodramatic as it is formulaic, reducing him to a cartoonish villain. “His dedication has no bounds. He wriggles, cajoles, and kills with reckless abandon. He wears blinders; his only direction is toward one end. Domination.” Meanwhile, Ben Zvi stands trial for the murder of Albert Horst, a rabid antisemite who beat an elderly Jewish man to death in front of his 7-year-old granddaughter, and then attempted to rape her. Indeed, Ben Zvi did kill Horst, but defends himself on the grounds that it was morally justified, especially during a precarious time for Jews everywhere, a movingly depicted position that’s the best part of the story. The pacing is breakneck, and the pages abound with eventful action and intrigue. However, it’s far too generously packed; there are too many subplots, including two different murder trials, pushing a complex tale into incoherence. The novel’s principal vice is its histrionic tone—the book reads like a combination of soap opera and action-adventure movie—but readers may appreciate the high-stakes storytelling.
A moving novel, albeit more theatrical than thrilling.Pub Date: April 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798391665519
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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