A dark, intense, and riveting tale of redemption.
A reverend investigates a fellow clergyman likely immersed in something diabolical in this debut novel.
Father Leonardo’s mission in Australia is relatively simple: look into Aloysius Van Eyck. He’s a reverend at a Melbourne parish, but he may be the next bishop to the archdiocese. But one monsignor objects to this appointment, evidently based on hearing Van Eyck’s confession. As the monsignor offers no further specifics, Leonardo hunts for answers as to what exactly Van Eyck has been up to. Elsewhere, small-town Aussie teen Judas “Jud” Lidicotte wallows in self-abuse. It’s been a year since he lost his mother to liver failure and saw his older brother, who suffered the worst of their mom’s deceased boyfriend’s abuse. Jud, who can’t seem to kick his heroin habit, stirs up trouble around town. So when someone captures and violently assaults him and he narrowly escapes, people don’t believe his claim. Since his assailant is determined to grab him again, Jud struggles to stay ahead of this sadistic individual. When the teen’s life collides with Leonardo’s and Van Eyck’s trajectories, these already horrific circumstances only worsen. Mackin’s intriguing, relentlessly grim tale features myriad flawed individuals. For example, readers may cringe at Jud’s drunken antics at a local bar, while a few seemingly good-natured characters reveal surprisingly unsavory qualities. Vivid backstories provide depth for the players, from the Lidicottes to Van Eyck. The author doesn’t skimp on violence; it’s often implied, though descriptions are occasionally graphic. But the scariest moments teem with suspense, especially with Jud aware that someone is trying to kill him. Mackin deftly packs rich, abundant details into steadily paced scenes, whether discussions among clergymen or a chase sequence: “Jud darted down the carriage to the first set of sliding doors. Stumbling backward he clung to the overhead handrail with both hands and kicked at the high strength plexiglass.”
A dark, intense, and riveting tale of redemption.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 979-8536842393
Page Count: 219
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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