The "duhs" outnumber the thrills in the 81-year-old Cook's latest.
After his wife, Emma, contracts deadly eastern equine encephalitis and he gets taken for an obscene ride by a predatory health insurance company, ex-cop Brian Murphy fights back.
When he and Emma retired from the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit to start a high-end personal protection security firm, they signed up for a short-term health insurance policy they didn't bother to read. After Emma falls ill following a mosquito bite and their 4-year-old daughter, Juliette, sinks into mysterious symptoms of her own, Murphy is left in an increasingly desperate state as uncovered bills soar near $200,000 and hospital officials and doctors give him the cold shoulder. He finds an ally and superior babysitter in Jeanne, a French-born woman with a background in child psychology he meets in the waiting room of a medical billing advocate. She was victimized by the same health insurance company after her husband suffered a heart attack, received inadequate treatment, and died. Oh, to have been in France, where their health care system is "so, so much better." Those expecting another outbreak thriller from the prolific author of Pandemic (2018) and Contagion (1995) will be disappointed to encounter what is largely a diatribe against the American health care system. It certainly deserves to be taken on, but Cook's priggish lectures about this hotbed of "personal greed trumping altruism" stop the novel in its tracks. The same confrontations are staged over and over, with the protagonist seemingly unable to read the writing on the wall or recognize obvious things until long after the reader has. And what the reader will see as unhinged behavior on Murphy's part, Cook somehow sees as reasonable. The book can be oddly compelling but goes off the rails in any number of ways.
The "duhs" outnumber the thrills in the 81-year-old Cook's latest.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32829-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
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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