A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous...
A newspaper reporter faces a literal deadline when his editor assigns him to investigate a Mexican drug lord.
One fateful evening in 1993, El Paso Tribune photographer Eddie Stevenson walks into his editor Ken Perry’s office, his face a bloody mess. When the editor asks what happened, the photog say that thugs, sent by wealthy Mexican drug lord Gustavo Jiménez, beat him up, smashed his cameras, and told him to deliver a message to crime reporter Tom Harley, telling him that he’s “dead meat.” The beating becomes front-page news and emboldens Perry: “We’re going to expose that señor and his whole rotten business,” he tells the Associated Press, “even if it takes us to the president of Mexico.” But is Harley the right reporter for the assignment? “Harley was lazy, an anthropologist” is the office scuttlebutt, so, in order to “light a fire under the story,” the editors put reporter Hank Klinger on it—and to light a fire under him, they mention the story’s Pulitzer Prize possibilities. The assault and the national press attention it draws set in motion a twisty, suspenseful thriller in which players on both sides of the border act on increasingly suspect motives. Baker, author of The Boost (2014), cannily sets his story in the early 1990s, when newspapers, big and small, could topple governments, and reporters weren’t dismissed as purveyors of “fake news.” The author, a former journalist for the El Paso Herald-Post during the same time period, not only knows the lay of the land, but also the ins and outs of news reporting. At one point, a journalist realizes that he’d neglected to report a major crime: “He’d played detective and forgotten about his job. Burying a story like that could get him fired.” It’s a densely populated narrative, but some characters stand out, such as banker Diana Clements, Stevenson’s unlikely girlfriend, in whom savvy readers will sense a bit of danger.
A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous milieu.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-299-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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