This psychological tale brings Ireland to life, but sometimes leaves its killer in the background.
In this thriller, a detective and a psychologist become romantically involved while hunting a brutal murderer in Ireland.
The year is 1999, and Cork is experiencing a series of ritualistic murders. The female victims, appearing one month apart, all have two beauty marks on the right sides of their necks. Evidence shows they’ve been tortured prior to death and raped afterward. Chief Investigator Sean O’Neill from Dublin assists the local police with his deep cultural knowledge and keen observation skills. He quickly identifies a drawing, knifed in a tree at a crime scene, of what appears to be the Eye of Horus. Also working the case is Erin Parker, an American criminal psychologist, who’s capable of keeping up with Sean’s roaming intellect. As evidence leads the investigators around Cork and to Dublin, Erin becomes infatuated with Sean and his rational, though combative, personality. One of their conversations leads to the biblical Abaddon, “the king of the abyss, the demon of death and destruction,” whose symbol Sean mistook for the Eye of Horus. Eventually, they follow leads pointing to a Dublin gangster named Abaddon and one of his missing crew members, Ray Queen. When a man named Michael Byrne claims to have escaped being murdered, the case grows even more complex. Abdullaoglu offers sparkling portrayals of Cork and many famous locations, including the An Spailpín Fánac pub. (The book, originally in Azerbaijani, was translated by Berlina.) The author also cannily employs Ireland’s frequent rain to make collecting evidence tough for the investigators. The grisly nature of the murders will grip genre fans hard and pull them along. In a letter to the protagonists, the killer asserts, “I am the thunderstorm of all your secret dreams and desires,” which hints at a poet/murderer from the mind of Thomas Harris, author of The Silence of the Lambs. But Abdullaoglu’s fondness for Sean, who’s as egotistical as he is smart, leads the narrative astray. Digressions into everything from the hormonal content of beer to the validity of patriarchal leadership often leave the pair starry-eyed and seemingly divorced from hunting a murderer.
This psychological tale brings Ireland to life, but sometimes leaves its killer in the background.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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