An ambitious undertaking with a thorny plot.
A man’s unconventional boss faces terrorism charges after being kidnapped in this thriller set in the 2000s.
Ritchie Swift and his eccentric philanthropist boss, Billy Miller, fly to Cairo to visit an “alleged chamber beneath the Sphinx.” En route, jihadi terrorists kidnap them and threaten to behead them. The story’s timeline veers between the recent past when Ritchie was first hired to the present-day kidnapping and its subsequent fallout. Shortly after being hired at Miller’s media conglomerate, Ritchie became Miller’s personal assistant and often dealt with his boss’s righteous determination to solve the world’s ills. In a letter intended for unnamed influential people, for example, Miller demanded that they attend to the ailing planet’s many problems and “realize the promise of the West—an end to hunger, poverty, climate change, and preventable disease.” Ritchie was promoted to VP of programming under Miller’s tutelage and worked on a couple of projects that Miller’s company was spearheading, including McSnoop. McSnoop was, essentially, a “See something, say something” hotline where everyday citizens could report instances of terrorism. McSnoop proved to be successful in “a sustained letup in terrorist activity,” and Ritchie assumed his kidnapping was related to the project’s success. Back in the story’s present day, Ritchie and Miller are freed from their kidnappers, and Miller faces new, considerable obstacles. The truth is a fascinating knot readers will enjoy untangling. The overstuffed plot often seems like a vehicle for the author to discuss a myriad of sociopolitical issues and cultural references, from pop art and poverty to Hurricane Katrina. Wills’ prose, however, is descriptive and detailed—“He reeked of cash, yet he had that cheap bottled suntan glow and a deeper, complementary russet shade to his perfectly cut hair, which came to a widow’s peak above a heavily lined brow”—a fun accompaniment to this twisty storyline.
An ambitious undertaking with a thorny plot.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
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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