A delightfully witty and weird crime yarn full of unexpected surprises.
A detective contends with hostage standoffs, unexplained fits of violence, and virgin births in Swirski’s mystery thriller.
In the decade after the Second World War, detective Alan Shepard walks in the roiling fog of London’s seediest streets past rats, junkyard dogs, and sleazy pubs toward his grim destination: the scene of a grisly domestic homicide. The murderer—aptly dubbed “the butcher” after the horrifying scene he’s left behind—accused his wife of cheating on him, resulting in her pregnancy. The catch: The victim swore up and down that she had never had sex with anyone but her infertile husband. Cases like this one are becoming more and more common—part of “a grab bag of incidents of domestic violence, a Sister of Charity suicide, a mentally unbalanced stenotypist, and a prostitute, savaged and tossed in the wood like a sack of winter potatoes.” Police chief Varis puts Shepard, “a methodical workhorse of an investigator” (especially compared to the flashy new “whiz-kid” detectives who litter the streets), on the case to unravel the unbelievable mystery of multiple seemingly immaculate conceptions. After teaming up with an unlikely partner—a life scientist named Genevieve Sisimond with a smart mouth and a mischievous smile—Shepard embarks on the wildest and weirdest investigation of his career. Swirski delivers a swift and succinct tale of science-defying murder and mystery with simple yet effective prose; no word is wasted in moving the narrative forward, and each plot twist and bit of character development is handled with just the right amount of detail. The detective and the scientist make for a perfectly engaging team; they are, respectively, serious and silly, hard and soft, complex and refreshingly simplistic. The author shines at writing quick-witted dialogue that simmers with style and speed; Shepard and Sisimond lead readers through a genre-defying thriller full of personality.
A delightfully witty and weird crime yarn full of unexpected surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781067354848
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Bookmason House
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.
An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine.
Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she’s a “no-frills” person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship’s departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend’s atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that’s nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something’s off, but she can’t put together the pieces. That’s because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who’s patient and sensible to the end, you’ll just have to wait.
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780062998101
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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