A gritty and entertaining, if sometimes formulaic, international thriller.
Hotchkiss delivers a dark thriller about a young Bostonian who’s hunted by professional killers and adapts to their lethal mindset to survive.
Not long after Jordan Vance loses her job at a strip club for kicking someone who got handsy, a stranger tries to kill her in a grocery store parking lot. Enter professional killer Dennis, who intervenes with efficient brutality and saves her life. As he and Jordan drive to safety in her car—with the body of her recent assailant in the trunk—Dennis reveals that he’s been hired to protect her from Iranian general Qasim Vahidi, who wants to use her as leverage to keep her father, Michael, from revealing his crimes. This comes as news to Jordan, who thought both her parents were killed in a car accident years ago. It turns out that her dad was not merely an engineer, but also a consultant to foreign governments; the accident was an attempt by Gen. Vahidi’s operatives to silence Michael, who was a witness to some of the dictator’s horrific acts. Somehow Michael survived the accident, however, and he’s recently resurfaced. Now Dennis, a freelance operative for the British government, is on a mission to keep Jordan safe. Hotchkiss maintains a consistent pace, grabbing the reader from the opening brawl. Jordan, driven by revenge and a desperate need for freedom, appealingly refuses to be a passive victim and instead seizes the opportunity to form a lethal but lasting partnership with her protector. It’s satisfying to watch an underestimated protagonist get the better of heartless, misogynistic predators. Dennis initially inhabits the cliche of the stoic hit man: “This man had just killed another man in front of me, with the casual precision of someone dusting crumbs off their shirt.” As the story goes on, though, his heart of gold eventually overrides his professional demeanor. The romantic dynamic with Jordan is particularly refreshing in that she chooses not to hide behind Dennis; she’s a formidable character who uses his protective instincts to achieve her own violent ends.
A gritty and entertaining, if sometimes formulaic, international thriller.Pub Date: March 15, 2026
ISBN: 9798248283446
Page Count: 242
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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