A fast-paced adventure with some emotional weight.
Guam-based U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Randall Dexter “Dex” Kevan Jr. becomes involved in a high-stakes gold theft in Charles’ novel.
Early in this novel, Dex’s father, also a soldier, leads a company of troops on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam in 1969, and Tech. Sgt. McGovern joins the team. After the mission is scrubbed, McGovern’s group is killed by North Vietnamese troops, and Dex’s dad is wrongly labeled a deserter. Later, in 1986, Dex, an Air Force cargo specialist, helps offload artwork and other goods from various aircraft. When he discovers 137 gold bars onboard a plane, he learns that ousted Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos seized his people’s property and that the United States government must return it to its rightful owners—but it turns out that gold is illegal for Filipinos to own, aside from jewelry. Instead, Dex plots to steal it, enlisting his colleagues Airman 1st Class Ernie Crenshaw, Airman 1st Class Angelina “Angel” Perez, and Tech. Sgt. Warren Gubler in his plan. Soon Filipino Col. Talan Madulás, the head of Marcos’ death squad, realizes the gold is missing and gives chase. Air Force veteran Charles’ novel feels entirely authentic, and his extensive knowledge of military aircraft and procedure lends weight to Dex’s exploits, as when the character actually steals the gold from a C-141 aircraft. The author’s prose style is largely crisp and direct. When Angel escapes capture, for instance, she chooses a clipped pronouncement over lengthy explication: “I’m no longer defenseless.” At times, the dialogue becomes a bit unrealistic (“I’ll have to check the possibility once I get off duty”), but this detracts only slightly from the compelling, well-paced plot. Similarly, some of the characters’ backstories feel underdeveloped, but every player proves memorable nonetheless—especially for such a relatively compact narrative.
A fast-paced adventure with some emotional weight.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73395-885-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Valkyrie Spirit Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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