Turow clearly had fun writing this one, and his fans will have fun reading it.
A private eye aids a police chief whose knickers may be in a twist.
In Highland Isle, Chief Lucia “Lucy” Gomez is accused of forcing a subordinate to have sex with her in exchange for his promotion to sergeant before his retirement. Unfortunately for the chief, there is a lurid photograph. But wait, she says, it must be Photoshopped. That can't be her. Well, we'll see about that. She's a “good police chief,” an attorney says. “But power corrupts. And she's turned her officers into her pool boys.” If a civil hearing determines that she’s been “bringing home guys who were under [her] command,” those knickers are well and truly twisted. Doing research on her behalf is the narrator, Clarice "Pinky" Granum, a 33-year-old ace investigator who works for the chief's lawyer, Rik Dudek. Gomez is a strong character, but she’s nothing like Pinky, the granddaughter of Sandy Stern, who has been a recurring character in Turow’s novels. Sandy is now in his mid-80s and in assisted living, where Pinky comes to visit. Pinky is a bisexual “inked-up chick” with a nail in her nose, and her ex-girlfriend is a “lumbersexual” cop named Tonya. Sandy is cool with all that as long as Pinky takes out the nail and wears long sleeves when necessary. She's very athletic, was once a police cadet, and is happy to be a “queerdo.” And wouldn't you know, she lives next door to a guy she calls The Weird One, or TWO, who she becomes convinced is a spy. Anyway, she’s skeptical about the chief forcing sex on a guy. “She's a woman, Boss. Men still hate it when a female does what she wants with her body. These dudes' stories make no sense." And then a witness named Blanco dies, raising the stakes. Did the chief have him whacked? Or maybe it was TWO, who is a Hmong guy named Koob, or a superrich ex-cop real estate mogul nicknamed the Ritz. Pinky and her colorful cohorts are the book's main appeal, but readers wanting gunplay won’t be disappointed.
Turow clearly had fun writing this one, and his fans will have fun reading it.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5-387-0632-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
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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