A creatively conceived, over-the-top thriller with plenty of room for more delicious treachery.
A reinvigorated gang of nine fearless yet curiously likable villains springs into action.
Mesling’s rousing thriller features a clever hit man named Davenport, known in underworld arenas as the “Mad Marksman of Malta.” Readers first meet Davenport in Florence, Italy, hard at work discreetly vanquishing international cargo negotiator Max Brindle. But this time, a rare mechanical malfunction occurs, and the hit on Brindle is botched, which sets in motion a series of deadly revenge plots. Meanwhile, crime syndicate figurehead Black Phantom, believing Brindle to be slaughtered, makes Davenport his target in a retaliation scheme that threatens the hit man’s family and ignites a vicious battle between the two men. In order to arm himself to the fullest extent, Davenport contacts a bevy of slick, vicious evildoers who are part of a group known as “The Portable Nine.” All of them exhibit unique monikers and lethal specialties. With the formation of this team of lawless underdogs, the author’s multifaceted story shifts into high gear. Chapter by chapter, Davenport’s deadly band is individually unveiled, each with distinctive details and personality quirks that keep the action popping and readers turning pages; there is nary a dull moment in this novel. These warriors, though most “likely to be out of shape and out of practice,” are urgently summoned after years apart and recruited back into action from the comfort of hiding places ranging from Los Angeles and the Midwest to the Australian Outback.
In this top-notch tale, Mesling takes great care to ensure the group is comprised of a formidable lot: not the average “workaday thug and cookie-cutter hit man” but a posse of “outcasts, criminals, egotists, and lunatics” sharing a unifying code of ethics. When gathered together, they form “a country unto themselves.” Alongside kingpin Davenport, the Nine include the hatchet-brandishing Butcher; fidgety Twitch Markham; the intimidating, business-minded Robin Varnesse; and brutal Chicagoan Miranda Gissing, a fierce fighter. They are joined by cunning former porn actress Lovinia Dulcet, who brandishes two Japanese steel skewers as her “Twin Delights” weapons of choice; Australian motorcyclist and macho man Abel Hazard, who surgically removed the fear center from his brain in order to become an audacious killer; and sightless Mr. Bonnet and his integral psychiatrist sidekick, Dr. Intaglio, who are sketchy spies for the Black Phantom and rejoin the others to infiltrate and leak intelligence. All fearless and mercilessly primed, the group is assembled by Davenport to help him put an end to the Black Phantom’s revenge plot to capture and exterminate the Nine (and a larger, associated terrorist scheme as well). Electronic trackers, blow darts, and a desert showdown provide the riveting conclusion while leaving the door ajar for further adventures now that the team has regrouped and dusted off its talents. The author keeps all his characters spinning, though some naturally dominate, right through the rather rushed but satisfying ending.
A creatively conceived, over-the-top thriller with plenty of room for more delicious treachery.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-57-873256-5
Page Count: 299
Publisher: Other Kingdoms Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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