A somewhat contrived but atmospheric and psychologically rich tale of erotic and philosophical enigmas.
A reporter on the trail of a missing woman finds herself embroiled in pornography and weird rituals in this labyrinthine mystery.
Andromeda Chamberlain, a freelance journalist with preternatural self-possession and a cheek scar that doesn’t spoil her looks, gets a strange assignment from an anonymous editor to write about Margot Vaughn. Margot hasn’t been heard from for a decade, since she ran away from home at the age of 15. Despite odd provisos—Andromeda has to wear a titanium collar at all times—the enormous fee seals the deal. Andromeda jets to Miami to see Margot’s father but turns up no leads. Then a homeless man gives her a DVD of an artsy porn movie starring Margot that’s full of symbolic references to ancient Greek rites. That clue sends Andromeda to Los Angeles, where she loses a tail by borrowing a porn distributor’s car in exchange for a promise to do a soft-core video. Soon, she’s off to Paris, where she discovers that scandalous avant-garde filmmaker Orlando Gidding directed Margot’s movie. Later, Andromeda attends a costume ball in Venice, where she gets chloroformed, tied up, undressed, and injected with psychedelics in front of an audience. Unfazed, she travels to a medieval Scottish abbey where Orlando is completing his film version of Faust. But before he’ll answer questions about Margot, Andromeda must find five keys he has hidden in the abbey by investigating cryptic clues. The sexual tone and mythological resonances of Brace’s yarn feel like a mashup of the John Fowles novel The Magus and Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut, replete with swanky furnishings, ruminations on art, and casual nudity. Andromeda is an uneven hero, quick-witted but passive, suggestible, and led by artificial plot twists. Although given to jarring intellectual digressions (“The free-market is…a chaos of irrationality operating within a tightly bounded space: a Feyerabendian tumult within a Foucaultian constellation of power relations”), Brace is a talented writer. The author’s canny prose finds sharp, inchoate conflict (“She can feel slight pressure from the pad of his thumb under her jaw pushing upward, whether to ease access to her lips to be kissed or to her neck to be strangled she does not know”) in the most innocuous situations.
A somewhat contrived but atmospheric and psychologically rich tale of erotic and philosophical enigmas.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73731-923-8
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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