A delightfully bizarre and enthralling tale of good versus evil.
In Cook’s debut thriller, a government subcontractor follows cryptic messages to thwart the destruction of the civilized world.
Chase Memphis works for various agencies to help prevent crises, using an “unnatural intuition” to pinpoint danger. In Tanzania, he directs United States soldiers on a search-and-rescue mission that ends with a shocking, unexplained explosion that kills nearly 30 soldiers. He returns to his Washington, D.C., office—the Mud Room, so called for its beige walls, old brown carpet, and the messy cases that are assigned there. Desperate to discover the truth behind the disaster in Tanzania, he embarks on a journey to gather and study various pieces of artwork and an ancient document written by the Greek scientist Archimedes, convinced that these items contain clues to the mystery and warnings of evils that could tear humanity apart. For this international excursion, he teams up with Ellis Newton, an old friend, and Mercy Peabody, a new romantic interest. Chase comes to cautiously trust Faan, a strange, sometimes helpful man who pops up wherever Chase goes while insisting that it’s Chase who’s following him. The author fills this story with abstruse details: Chase can’t explain his premonitions, and it’s not clear what Archimedes and the others were trying to say through their work. Nevertheless, Chase fights to save the world from…some form of peril. And while that peril is mostly vague, a tangible, powerful villain is hot on Chase’s trail. This evildoer is one of the novel’s several indelible characters, as are Faan, who’s charming but too mysterious to be wholly reliable, and Helen, the Mud Room receptionist who functions as a surrogate mother to the orphaned Chase. Cook’s narrative takes readers around the world, including stops in London and Greece, and aptly depicts the sights: white buildings on Mykonos Island seen from above are described as “tiles lined up in haphazard rows.” The ending, like the rest of the book, is ambiguous and open to interpretation.
A delightfully bizarre and enthralling tale of good versus evil.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9798987451205
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Zalika Productions
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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