Well-written, character-driven portrait of small-town New England meets Silence of the Lambs. Strong stomach a plus.
A British novelist turned Maine police detective finds himself investigating a horrific murder.
Nichols follows up his innovative novel The Rocks (2015) with a more familiar type of thriller. In its opening scene we meet three teenage boys, gleefully skateboarding the nighttime streets of sleepy Granite Harbor. When Shane splits off from the group, an observer in a pickup truck rolls after him, a montage of images racing through his brain. “He was beneath the small blond girl riding him like a rocking horse....He was pinned to the ground as boys and girls spread their legs above him....In the woods with Ivan, the Master...[t]he hanging coyote was speaking his name....In his mouth he tasted the bitter pus....” Think we might have a serial killer on our hands? Very soon we will learn the horrific details of his murderous routine, as will Det. Alex Brangwen, the interesting Brit at the center of the novel’s large, well-developed ensemble cast. As Alex was beginning a successful writing career in the U.K.—he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize—his pregnant American wife, truly a bitch on wheels, insisted on moving home to have her baby. Maine, she decided, telling Alex it was beautiful, full of writers, and he’d love it there. But, unfortunately, things went south with both the marriage and his third novel, and he ended up working at the local police department, whose chief, Belinda “Billie” Raintree, had read his books and thought the skill set would translate. Now Shane’s desecrated body turns up on the grounds of the Settlement, a local archaeological site where many locals work as historic re-enactors, Goody this and Goodman that. Shane was a friend of Alex’s now-teenage daughter Sophie, and she and the other two skateboarders become even more alienated from their parents after the murder—particularly problematic because Mr. Weirdo still has them in his sights.
Well-written, character-driven portrait of small-town New England meets Silence of the Lambs. Strong stomach a plus.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250894816
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
