Exhilarating and suspenseful, this novel is hard to put down and sure to please.
In DePaul’s thriller, a former assassin intends to leave everything behind—until she meets the man of her dreams.
Sandra Walsh was a highly skilled sniper for the mercenary agency SweetBriar Group until one fatal day changed everything. She and her team were supposed to save a group of victims from sex slavery, but in one wrong move, Sandra accidentally shot a young girl. There’s no way she can continue after that, so she faked her death and left everything behind (“A dead operative who assassinates a victim doesn’t get a home. She gets a life on the run. She had to squash the urge to give her conscience the finger”). Her team of Talon, Romeo, Cappy, and Magician are like family, but she has no choice. She begins a new life as an operations manager at the Gradwick Adventure Center, an arcade and games facility in Ridge Creek, North Carolina, and for a while everything seems to be all right. Her boss is Casper Grady, a handsome and muscular former Marine who now spends his time overseeing a safe place for families to enjoy some entertainment. Sparks fly, and there’s a definite romantic and physical tension between Sandra and Grady, but she can’t risk getting close to anyone. Unfortunately, her past catches up to her and she has to go on the run; Carlos, the head of the cartel responsible for the sex slavery Sandra was trying to stop, is seething to get revenge against the sniper who put a huge dent in his operation. Another threat is Victor, the head of SBG, who wants to take Sandra out now that she’s gone rogue and threatened the whole agency. Grady refuses to leave her unprotected and joins her, leaving his own world behind. The author has crafted an excellent suspense thriller, with many unpredictable twists and turns, and created great antagonists in Victor and Carlos, keeping the stakes high. Sandra proves herself to be a lethal adversary as well as a relatable woman who wants romance with her handsome boss. Grady is initially difficult to find appealing, but he eventually proves himself to be a worthy partner to her. Overall, this is a fun and valuable addition to any thriller fan’s bookshelf.
Exhilarating and suspenseful, this novel is hard to put down and sure to please.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 978-1959324010
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Northfair Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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