A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.
A tech firm revives long-deceased historical geniuses for nefarious purposes in Unwin’s futuristic thriller.
Physicist Dr. Art Cornysh has been summoned from Tennessee to Seattle to interview with the Robin Hood–themed Locksley capital markets company, a firm that doesn’t specialize in anything he’s good at or trained in. Art’s life partner, Thea, a math teacher, revels in the opportunity, but Art is skeptical of the offer. At a lavish party, aggressive grooming by a mysterious executive works its magic, and Art finally gives in and accepts their offer. But things in the company start unraveling immediately: When employee Roxanne “Rox” Wells starts toying with facial recognition software and uncovers stunning evidence that Locksley has been cloning historical geniuses, she is abruptly terminated. Rox and co-worker Peter “Bunny” Bunsen team with Art to examine digital side-by-side comparisons of employees (themselves included) whose appearances resemble those of younger versions of “magni” geniuses Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and others. Together, they must decipher the manipulations conducted for years by Locksley’s CEO, David Maduro, who is taking the business over from his father—whose plan was to regenerate a series of “great minds” from history to build the beginnings of a “master race.” In a nasty, lethal battle of wits and strategic maneuvering, Rox, Bunny, and Art work tirelessly to expose the Maduro family’s scheme to extract DNA samples from the graves of the greatest intellects of all time. The author keeps the chapters briskly clipped, which adds to the suspense factor in this futuristic, high-tech tale of double-crossing duplicates (“with the arm that had been wrapped around her, she’s swept up by the crook of her legs and carried toward the banister. The frenzy of her limbs accelerates as she’s taken, feet first, toward a ten-story plunge”). A final showdown pitting brilliant minds of the past against contemporary thinkers makes for a memorable climax.
A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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