Strictly for dog lovers and action fans. Dogs-in-action junkies will be transported.
A fifth outing pits search-and-rescue officer Meg Jennings and her canine partner against a serial killer whose choice of weapons drives the story.
The shooting of Sgt. Noah Hubbert, of the Georgia State Patrol, would be shocking under any circumstances. What sets it apart is the fact that he’s been shot with an arrow—and that he’s not the first such victim in the area. Tim Reynolds, the chairman of the Fannin County Board of Commissioners, was struck down by an identical arrow two weeks ago. The killer’s modus operandi should make him absurdly easy to track down: How many archers can reliably hit their targets from as far away as this one clearly was? And the most likely motive is pretty clear too: opposition to the Copperhill Dam, which has been planned to manage the water level of the Toccoa River, which separates McCaysville, Georgia, from Copperhill, Tennessee. But that doesn’t deprive Driscoll of the opportunity for several gripping sequences involving the tracking of the suspect by members of the Human Scent Evidence Team and their canine partners. These action sequences, juiced by the heroine’s fear of heights, are terrific, and the interplay between the dogs and their handlers is deeply felt. But neither the plotting nor the characterization measures up to them. Meg’s friend Clay McCord, of the Washington Post, generates a list of award-winning archers, and then Meg and Special Agent Sam Torres, of the Atlanta FBI, go down the list, trying to ignore the mounting body count, till a profiler points them to the only suspect who’s come close to making an impression.
Strictly for dog lovers and action fans. Dogs-in-action junkies will be transported.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2249-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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