An exciting and surprising thriller with a great mystery.
The search for a missing young woman unearths dark secrets in Sterling’s thriller.
Megan Floyd disappeared on Dec. 12, 1996, when she was 19 years old. Two years later, her father, Tom, is still searching for her. His marriage has fallen apart and his wife, Lisa, is barely hanging on, believing Megan to be dead. Yet Tom still has hope. He hires Marshall York, a troubled detective, and his assistant investigator, Hannah Jacobs, who has a disturbing past of her own. Tom suspects Kevin Strand, a local serial killer who sits on death row, convicted of other crimes. Tom also points Marshall in the direction of Megan’s ex-boyfriend, Jack Gardner, who did not participate in the search for Megan. Hannah does her own sleuthing and becomes suspicious of Benjamin Paterson, who worked with Megan in the deli of the Fraser Market and had previously broken into a woman’s home. As the three continue their search, they uncover a startling and dark secret: Megan was using and dealing drugs. Tom is closer to answers than ever before, but he may not like the truth when he finds it. The author has delivered an emotionally raw and viscerally intense mystery/thriller that never pulls its punches (“He instantly realized he’d never said those words aloud—that he was hopeful that a rotting corpse deep in the forest was his baby girl”). The three main characters, Tom, Marshall, and Hannah, are varied and compelling, driving the plot forward in complex storylines that explore their multifaceted personalities. The mystery itself is unpredictable while also believable, with many unexpected and harrowing twists and turns. The content of the story is heavy and dark, but Sterling handles the material and the characters with care and sensitivity. Fans of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2005) will find much here to love and will look forward to further stories in the series.
An exciting and surprising thriller with a great mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780997017526
Page Count: 233
Publisher: No Bueno Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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