A complex, bonkers, and bracing conspiracy tale for adventurous readers.
A thriller set in 1991 focuses on the director of a mental hospital.
Say his name: Heimdallr. From Albania and lower Bavaria to upstate New York, the site of a mental hospital, this densely plotted novel is all over the map and resists an easy synopsis (but in a good way). In Albania, a beautiful widow defies attempts to compel her to become a sex worker for a better lifestyle. A Canadian mining director with suspect intentions hires her as a translator. Things go south quickly, leading readers to Birger Wallenberg, the recently hired director of the Asgard Park Institute for the Criminally Insane. En route by plane, he has a dream of using a remote probe that allows its user to access a psychotherapist’s patient’s mind and to experience what the person sees, feels, and thinks. In his dream, he enters a distant host, a woman who at that moment is flushing down a toilet $10 million worth of crack cocaine that a crime kingpin wants back, instigating the first crisis of Wallenberg’s directorship. In the real world, a schizophrenic from the institute escapes and murders two assailants sent to menace the woman, who’s a well-known scientist, and her 6-year-old daughter. And then things take a mythic turn: Wallenberg meets the institute’s former director, who warns him: “I brought you to Asgard Park for a purpose that is not to your liking.” Meaning Wallenberg must become “the chosen watchman; the vessel of Heimdallr, the god in Nordic mythology credited with social order on Earth.” Simonar has crafted a true What the Heck narrative that expands to include Burton Crane, “a roving troubleshooter,” investigating growing suspicions of “a secret empire out there…the world’s greatest conspiracy to defraud humankind.” The ambitious book is divided into four parts, and it can be easy to lose the thread as the story jumps to new perspectives. But patient and attentive readers will be rewarded when the intriguing strands come together. What keeps the pages turning is best summed up by one character’s declaration: “Wonders never cease at Asgard Park.”
A complex, bonkers, and bracing conspiracy tale for adventurous readers.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-91-987629-0-7
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Eventhor Media
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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