Despite some plot holes and cardboard characters, an action-packed thrill ride with plot twists around nearly every curve.
A maverick agent battles duplicity on all sides in a personal rescue mission.
In Istanbul, American Charlie Henican is seized by half a dozen men who call him an assassin. Twelve hours later, CIA deputy director Dorothy Triggs strategizes in the Bahamas with Max Oswald, her son and “right-hand man” about ways to convince Pierce Hunt to rescue Henican, his close friend. Hunt is vacationing there with his lover, Anna Garcia, who has shut down the Garcia crime syndicate, to which she’s the heiress. Though Hunt now works for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Triggs is confident that his history with Henican in Gaza will secure his involvement. Her attempt to convince Hunt goes badly, and later Triggs and Max are ambushed and nearly killed. A video confirms that Henican is alive, held by a group called the Maroon Berets, who accuse him of trying to kill the president of Turkey. Triggs declares the rescue of Henican too sensitive for Hunt’s renegade style and, in a meeting at Langley, convinces him to instead accompany veteran agent Harriet Jacobs on a mission to take out Venezuelan strongman Jorge Ramirez, who’ll be in Switzerland. Ramirez, meanwhile, is eager to align himself with the Maroon Berets and supplies them with intel on Venezuela’s new president, Col. Arteaga, whom the CIA has dubbed “Queen Bee.” Ramirez is surprised to learn that he’s to meet CIA operative Aram Diljen, a possible mole. Concealed at the meeting, Hunt and Jacobs receive an order at the last minute to kill Diljen instead. Who can the righteous Hunt trust?
Despite some plot holes and cardboard characters, an action-packed thrill ride with plot twists around nearly every curve.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2082-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.
Lt. Eve Dallas is sucked into a murder that may well be overshadowed by another crime—and by the news that Roarke, her billionaire husband, is implicated in both felonies in an unexpected and troubling way.
Disturbed from her sleep, Aileen Carville arises to discover her wealthy husband, Nathan Barrister, coshed to death by a heavy amethyst from the collection of his late father, Zip Global founder Henry J. Barrister. His corpse is lying outside an open vault that everyone in the family insists they hadn’t known about until a couple of months ago, and it’s filled with priceless paintings and sculptures and jewels taken years ago from an A-list of museums, one of which—the Royal Suite, a legendary emerald setting—has evidently been stolen once again. The bombshell revelation that Henry must have commissioned the thefts himself leads to two questions—how did the thief who killed Nathan know about the vault and its contents, and what possessed Nathan’s wealthy father to steal and hide all these goodies in the first place?—that are much more interesting than whodunit, though only one of them will be satisfactorily answered. Another bombshell revelation follows: Roarke’s confession to Dallas that he stole the Royal Suite from London’s Tate Gallery when he was still a teenager, years before he turned away from a life of crime himself. Since Interpol is much more interested in the theft than the murder, there’s a real danger that they’ll decide Roarke was once again the thief. So, Dallas faces the double challenge of solving the crimes and keeping her beloved husband out of the frame.
The heroine’s 62nd appearance is a hit-or-miss mystery best suited for readers already invested in her complicated life.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414526
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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