Thriller fans will find this adventure highly entertaining and addictive.
Zappa’s latest installment in his saga featuring Jo Crowder pits the New Orleans homicide detective against a ruthless Mexican drug lord.
After stealing a cache of drugs and money from a recent raid, a disillusioned Crowder is caught, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. “Here I am, putting my life on the line every fucking day doing my job, while others are getting away with shit—buying new cars, paying off their mortgages and credit card debt, and padding their bank accounts. And me, I can barely afford the mortgage payment on the dump I call a home.” Temporarily housed in a low-security detention facility, Crowder realizes she can’t spend the next two decades in prison—she needs to escape as soon as possible, flee the country, and try to begin a new life under a new identity. Then Elena Sanchez-Gomez—the wife of the head of an infamous Mexican drug-trafficking cartel—enters the facility as a prisoner; she’s recently been convicted of the attempted murder of a Louisiana state trooper during a traffic stop. The two women soon join forces in an attempt to not only survive the many dangers of the prison system but also to try to escape, cross the border into Mexico, and reunite with Sanchez-Gomez’s all-powerful husband, nicknamed El Leon (the Lion). Both women are cunning in their own ways: Crowder is a “dirty cop” with military and combat training, and Sanchez-Gomez is a survivor of Mexico’s mean streets, an orphan who’s had to kill multiple times to survive. Should the modern-day versions of Thelma and Louise eventually find a way to escape the detention faculty, their path to freedom—literally more than a thousand miles into southern Mexico—will be flooded with DEA agents, police officers, enemy cartel members, and innumerable people seeking the lucrative reward money for apprehending the two escaped convicts.
Complicating matters is El Leon’s newest drug on the market, which is laced with fentanyl, ecstasy, and LSD and is “a hundred times more potent than prescription oxycodone.” Described as “the most dangerous drug to have ever been trafficked in the United States,” the deadly new product leaves Crowder with a conflicted conscience. Her intense bond with Sanchez-Gomez is genuine, but will helping her ultimately end up killing thousands of addicts in the States? The action-packed story revolves around a cast of diverse and deeply developed characters, but the novel’s greatest strength comes from former trial lawyer Zappa’s ability to construct an impressively intricate storyline. The plot twists are worthy of applause, and readers will find themselves riveted throughout this highly palatable fusion of police procedural and mainstream thriller. The novel also differentiates itself from comparable titles through an examination (albeit subtle) of the opioid epidemic, which brings a timeliness and thematic weight to the story: “The body count from accidental overdoses continued to rise [in] the streets of more American cities. The only way to slow the emerging fentanyl epidemic was to stop the manufacture of [the] drug.”
Thriller fans will find this adventure highly entertaining and addictive.Pub Date: May 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781922329660
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Alkira
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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.
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