A highly entertaining crime thriller from a seasoned pro.
Lawyer Josie Bates is pulled into another dangerous situation when an old friend unexpectedly appears at her door in Forster’s eighth crime thriller in a series.
The container ship Faret Vild is anchored right outside the Port of Los Angeles. Onboard is a dead man who, until recently, had been traveling off-book, guarding the illegal cargo in the ship’s hold. Also onboard is the woman who killed him—someone with a secret who’s now gravely wounded. In the water, swimming toward shore, is another sailor who got aboard the ship by using a fake passport. He reaches land and enlists an exotic dancer named Sparkle to take him to Josie’s Hermosa Beach home. The washed-up sailor is Billy Zuni, aka Billy Zogaj, a runaway from Josie’s past who she assumed was dead. He wants her help in rescuing his wounded friend while the Faret Vild is in port, before the crew sets sail and the law of the sea takes jurisdiction. Josie will have to tangle with an uncooperative captain, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Port Authority—plus whatever underworld organization is expecting to collect what’s in the ship’s hold. As time ticks by, it becomes clear that the wounded sailor on the ship may not be the only one in danger. Forster’s taut prose exists in a boldly noirish register that’s stylishly divorced from reality. Here, for instance, Sparkle considers Josie upon first meeting her: “Sparkle…thought that this woman could make a killing if she ever decided to dance, but when she stood up straight Sparkle knew that would never be an option. The clue was in the way she stood on God’s earth.” The author knows how to wring the maximum tension from a scene, and the early sections are particularly enthralling. As the book goes on, the twists and turns, set pieces, and wonderfully broken side characters provide more than enough enjoyment for this latest addition to the series. Storylines from previous volumes inform the plot as it proceeds, but for the most part, the novel works well as a stand-alone episode.
A highly entertaining crime thriller from a seasoned pro.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-46-323000-8
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Smashwords
Review Posted Online: May 20, 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
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
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