An offbeat and gory, but ultimately unsatisfying, tale of terror.
In Carro’s horror novel, scientists developing a fear-inducing drug start human trials, using themselves as subjects.
Los Angeles resident Mitch Trager’s life is upended when his wife, Wendy, is killed during an armed robbery, just moments after they celebrated her birthday. Five years later, he seems to have moved forward, at least in his professional career. He’s the head of his own pharmaceutical company, Trager Chemicals, where he and a team of scientific researchers are developing a new kind of drug: one that induces fear. But just after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to start human trials, the project’s investors pull their funding and order them to clear the lab, which is housed in a refurbished former psychiatric hospital on an island off the Seattle coast. Determined to continue their work, the researchers decide to spend the weekend in the lab before the electricity gets turned off, and they start the trials on themselves. The same day, newspaperreporter Gillian McCann shows up unannounced to interview Trager for a follow-up to an article about Wendy’s murder. The researchers, who have all shared their deepest, darkest fears and traumas with Trager, try the drug and temporarily experience terrifying hallucinations. As they continue their research, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to tell what’s real and what’s not. Meanwhile, Gillian starts to realize that there’s a hidden motive behind Trager’s project. Carro combines an intriguing premise with classic horror story elements, including a creepy, isolated setting, a ragtag group of deeply traumatized people, an intrepid journalist, and sinister science. The book doesn’t quite come together in a satisfying way, however. Although the characters are mildly entertaining, none are particularly compelling. Occasionally stilted dialogue makes the pacing drag, and readers may find the narrative’s constantly shifting perspectives and timelines to be difficult to track. But the horror sequences are delightfully grotesque: “The wall came to life with movement. Arachnid legs popped into view all over the mass, like spiders escaping a wall of tar. There were hundreds.”
An offbeat and gory, but ultimately unsatisfying, tale of terror.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781735070179
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Tether Falls Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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