A taut, timely, terrific thriller.
A freshly minted police detective doesn’t believe a man died of natural causes, and his investigation leads all the way to Russia.
In Meredith’s fast-paced thriller, San Francisco homicide detective Steve Nguyen gets his first solo assignment: investigate the death of 31-year-old Luke Miller, an accountant at The Glass Foundation. Established by Julian Glass, an Eastern European transplant with ties to the United States Senate, the foundation supports groups focusing on education, health, and the environment. Steve’s news of Luke’s suspicious death—no forced entry, drugs, or trauma—shocks the foundation’s human resources head, Jennifer Krauss. Although 10 years older than Luke, the two were close friends. Jenn marveled at Luke’s attention to detail, saying he could find “things, little things, buried deep in an audit.” Unknown to anyone except Executive Director Roger Dayton, Luke also found one big thing: a file detailing questionable payments from international companies. Roger, who has ties to Russia, told his Russian contact that Luke discovered the file. The Russian arranged for the accountant’s elimination by an assassin and suggested that Luke may have told Jenn about his discovery. Forget #MeToo: Roger woos his underling to find out. He also helps in bugging her apartment and phone, allowing the Russians to hear what Steve tells her about the investigation’s progress. Meanwhile, Jenn becomes intrigued with Steve. She asks his cousin Tina—a smart-mouthed lawyer—for Steve’s backstory and learns “he’s addled with self-doubt.” Indeed, the detective’s sessions with his therapist add depth to the character and make the book more than a thriller, albeit an exciting one. Meredith’s characters are intriguing, fresh, and flawed. For example, Tina wears her “most revealing blouses to police interrogations. She’d use anything to her advantage, including her well-proportioned figure.” Steve—a Vietnamese American Stanford Law dropout and Bruce Lee look-alike, per Tina—graduated from the University of California at Berkeley at the age of 20. But he now has trouble fitting in as a policeman—“a career not wholly embraced” by his family. The plot, laced with deception and betrayal, seems frighteningly possible. Women and minorities have significant roles; the dialogue is smart; and the descriptions are strong: “It was noon, and the squad room smelled like a food court.”
A taut, timely, terrific thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60452-191-7
Page Count: 390
Publisher: BluewaterPress LLC
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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