Anchored by two tough yet likable sleuths, this is a rousing character-based mystery with potential.
A secret agent’s surveillance of a rogue killer gets personal in Dow’s suspense thriller.
This novel, the first in a planned trilogy, opens in Valencia, Spain, where Interpol agent Daniel Leder has finally located an elusive international assassin named Nester, a subject he’s been surveilling for the past year. Things quickly fall apart in a chaotic shipping port shoot-out as Nester viciously kills Daniel’s partner and close friend, Agent Simon Klein. Daniel’s mission to apprehend Nester becomes personal with the added motivation of revenge. The son of a United States Marine, Daniel’s resolve remains solid as he turns his attention to the man believed to be Nester’s next intended target: renowned Canadian professor, diplomat, and environmental conservative Matthew Guillaume, whose daughter is slated to participate in an equestrian show jumping event. When the assassin outsmarts everyone and sabotages the girl’s horse. Daniel, working undercover, is too late to intervene, but Tess Knight, an author and cyber security expert, swoops in to save the day. Though mutual trust is difficult to come by, Daniel feels an instant attraction to Tess, which sets the couple up for interpersonal entanglements that only mildly distract them from the more serious matters at hand (“He stood and met her feisty gaze before she headed for the door. Was it his imagination, or was the air between them a bit warmer?”). When they finally begin working (somewhat) in tandem, Nester has already stealthily infiltrated Daniel’s investigation in a major way. As an added point of intrigue, the author also threads Nester’s perspective into the narrative, bringing readers closer to the lethally clever, tech-savvy villain. Daniel is a powerful, intuitive protagonist who leaves no detail uncovered; his personality nicely complements Tess’s fearless demeanor even as they both face deadly threats. Dow has crafted an impressive, briskly paced thrill ride right up to the concluding cliffhanger, which leaves room for future installments.
Anchored by two tough yet likable sleuths, this is a rousing character-based mystery with potential.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2022
ISBN: 979-8886043792
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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