An immersive and timely industrial-accident thriller.
A government inspector faces down a corporate coverup in Wallace’s debut thriller.
Former mechanical engineer Jon Barrett is still reeling from a deadly accident that cost him his job—an accident that his bosses pinned on him. Luckily, he’s found work with a new industrial safety program for the Department of the Interior, investigating the same sorts of accidents as the one that still haunts his memory. When an explosion occurs at the Chemtrifuge Chemicals plant in Charleston, West Virginia, Jon is dispatched to figure out what went wrong. His mission is narrowly constrained: He must show that he’s doing his job in order to keep the program funded, but he can’t do anything that will rile any power players. He arrives at the plant just as the employees are attempting to squash all information about the source of the explosion—and they are not at all pleased to have someone from Washington poking around. Workers are dead, however, and one man—a senator’s son—is missing, meaning this isn’t the kind of case that can be swept under the rug. As the media and environmentalists swarm, Jon finds himself in a bind: Allowing the problem to go unaddressed could lead to danger at other plants, increasing the risk of more accidents like the one he can’t stop thinking about. But exposing the truth could cost him his job…and maybe even his life. Wallace offers rich details about the inner workings of a chemical plant and the many personalities that exist within its orbit, which keeps even the more technical material from feeling dry. Here he describes Cain Quinn, a senior adviser at Chemtrifuge and one of Jon’s primary antagonists: “It was not about the money, he had plenty of that. And it was not just about winning—it was about destroying. He did not want Chemtrifuge to simply exist alongside other competitors…He wanted to destroy all the company’s competitors, and everyone who had anything to do with them.” Readers will not want to put this one down.
An immersive and timely industrial-accident thriller.Pub Date: March 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781632997937
Page Count: 384
Publisher: River Grove Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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