This solid whodunit revels in its Southern flair and boasts a wonderfully nimble storyline.
A fatal aviation accident begins to look like a homicide in Arnold’s mystery novel.
Special Agent Dani York from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation heads to Tick County to look into a homicide. That’s where a local deputy has discovered the severed head of one of two missing men who’d been on a fishing trip. Searching Tick Springs Lake for further signs of the men and their boat, Dani turns up something even more shocking: A crashed plane at the lake’s bottom. The pilot, Hope Tucker, is also found dead, still in the pilot’s seat. Federal Aviation Administration Inspector Pat McNeil joins the investigation, and though the crash looks like an accident, Dani sticks around. Oddly enough, evidence suggests that Hope had died before the plane even took off. The case leads to Tucker Aviation, and the now widowed owner—Hope’s husband, David Tucker—quickly falls under suspicion for not reporting the aircraft missing. Dani interviews several individuals, including David’s son, the Tuckers’ nanny, and a pastor at the local church where partier-turned-worshipper Hope has donated quite a bit of money. Dani and Pat zero in on David, as his first wife, who died a year earlier, has a peculiar connection to Hope’s death. “I follow evidence,” Dani says, and that marks many others as murder suspects until she can rule them out. So, she continues to ask questions, dig for possible motives, and consider various scenarios to explain how a killer might have done it, all the while keeping pesky reporters at bay.
Arnold delivers out a tautly written Southern mystery. The Tennessee backdrop is vividly rendered, from the intense humidity (temperatures, despite recurrent rainstorms, rarely cool off) to the locals’ preferred elixir of bourbon. The author keeps the plot moving via dialogue that pops and relatively brief scenes. Arnold’s descriptions are vibrant without sacrificing conciseness: “The first drops hit in large, scattered splotches in the dry dirt, sending up puffs of dust. The team broke into a trot, then ran for their cars, most making it before sheets of rain blurred the horizon.” Dani is methodical in her investigation—the procedural aspects of the story feel authentic as she interviews people multiple times and scrutinizes details of the case. While she’s unquestionably attracted to the lanky, robust Pat, their engaging relationship is built on mutual respect. The rest of the cast is just as engaging, including a Tucker Aviation flight instructor, Hope’s unassuming mother (and straight-shooting grandmother), and Shelby County’s razor-sharp district attorney. Many of these characters are introduced as part of the murder investigation, but their distinctive lives and temperaments are well-developed. Although readers will guess some of the mystery’s turns, there are several surprises throughout, including the big reveal. The author rounds out this tale with a cynical take on the media—intermittent news articles come from two specific news sources that, despite covering the same story, are drastically different in their takes.
This solid whodunit revels in its Southern flair and boasts a wonderfully nimble storyline.Pub Date: July 10, 2025
ISBN: 9798290185811
Page Count: 326
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2025
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
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.
Murder disrupts the filming of—what else?—The Word Is Murder, based on the first novel starring author Horowitz and his sometime partner, ex-copper Daniel Hawthorne.
With commendably dramatic timing, gofer Izzy Mays bursts into the middle of a pivotal shot on location at The Stade in Hastings to announce that Hawthorne’s been murdered. Of course, what she means (though Horowitz takes his time clarifying this ambiguity) is that David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, has been fatally stabbed in the neck. Suspicion falls on James Aubrey, the agent Caine had just fired; Izzy, because Caine had caused her to be fired, too, though he ended up making his exit first; Ralph Seymour, the washed-up actor who’d returned from New Zealand to play Horowitz opposite Caine, his mortal enemy; and producer Teresa de León, who’s abruptly lost an important source of funding for the project; director Cy Truman; and screenwriter Shanika Harris, because why not? After Hawthorne builds meticulous hypothetical cases against several of these suspects, provoking Teresa’s apt rejoinder, “All those questions in the script and now you’re asking them for real,” he responds to Horowitz’s theory that he may have been the intended target after all by sharing a story from his early days as a private investigator in what ends up looking like the most elaborately extended red herring in the history of detective fiction. The two plots, past and present—or, to be more precise, past and present-day-adaptation-of-a-story-from-the-less-distant-past, are eventually woven together in ways only Horowitz’s most devoted fans will celebrate.
Yes, it has its playfully witty moments, but it’s a distinctly minor work in the author’s brainteasing canon.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780063305748
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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