The most conventional of the gifted hero’s four cases still has plenty to keep fans glued to their seats.
The disappearances of a California congressman and three of his college buddies cue another manhunt for Magnus "Steps" Craig, the nonpareil agent of the FBI’s Special Tracking Unit.
Marco Perez was a successful oncologist before the citizens of Bakersfield elected him to Congress. Wade Winchell, the Major Crimes deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, has tangled with Mexican drug lords. Jason Norris is a well-heeled accountant; and hedge fund manager Noah Long’s wealth leaves Norris in the dust. So they’ve all acquired scads of enemies along the way, and it’s anyone’s guess why they vanished from their annual fishing trip on the Upper Kern River or who the kidnapper’s primary target was. As usual, though, Steps, who can see the shine that identifies the unique aura of every human being, and his more earthbound partner, Jimmy Donovan, are confronted by crime scenes far more arresting than the humdrum details of the criminal’s motive or identity. Norris is seemingly discovered propped up on a park bench—except that the corpse in his clothing isn’t his but that of a man a generation older than him, the killer having snatched the corpse from its recent grave and substituted Norris’ still-living body. A Polaroid photo in the dead man’s pocket identifies the likely next victim as Winchell and suggests that the clock is ticking before his time is up. An episode that interjects human smuggler Abel Moya into the mix dramatizes the killer’s sadistic sense of humor. The killings are so ghoulish, in fact, that the final confrontation comes as a distinct and probably inevitable anticlimax.
The most conventional of the gifted hero’s four cases still has plenty to keep fans glued to their seats.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7940-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
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
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