Good LA atmosphere, people worth caring about, lots of corpses, and at least one killer too many.
After 10 chronicles of the crime-solving adventures of the madcap partners in Minneapolis’ Monkeewrench Software, Tracy shifts dramatically to focus on a spate of killings on Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile.
Stella Clary is the third woman to be gutted by a murderer who’s shown no interest in molesting his victims sexually. Although LAPD homicide detectives Margaret Nolan and Al Crawford are under pressure to bring in the perp, they can’t even figure out how he escapes the blood-drenched crime scenes without getting noticed. And things are about to get worse. The morning after event promoter Ryan Gallagher settles an argument with his girlfriend, Pearl Club waitress Melody Traeger, by punching her out, someone breaks into her apartment and leaves two dozen red roses behind. A peace offering, she thinks, but Ryan insists they weren’t from him, and a day later he’s dead too, leaving Melody both traumatized and thoroughly creeped out by the black Jeep she’s convinced is stalking her. Sam Easton, the Pearl Club’s barback, takes Melody under his wing even though he’s got problems of his own, from extensive physical and mental scarring from a car bomb he was the only GI to survive to his haunting by Ronald Doerr, who served with him in Afghanistan, to his recent breakup with his wife, Yukiko, who’s about to get killed herself and make Sam a prime suspect. Detective Remy Beaudreau, who wants to buy Nolan a drink and take her home with him, doesn’t believe in coincidences, and brother, is he in the wrong book.
Good LA atmosphere, people worth caring about, lots of corpses, and at least one killer too many.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2507-5494-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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