A patchy read but with a twist ending that will dazzle fans of the genre.
A shocking local murder case revives a down-on-his-luck lawyer’s unraveling career in criminal attorney Hamilton’s debut suspense thriller.
The author draws on his own life’s work as an attorney in this fast-paced debut chronicling the exploits of Canadian lawyer Hyman Kazan. Not a particularly likable nor well-adjusted protagonist, 50-something Kazan has seen better days. His legal career is sputtering, and he and his girlfriend, Briar, are on the rocks. Everything, especially the dreary Vancouver weather, seems to remind him of his shortcomings. The ideal distraction soon presents itself when Simon Westfall, a young drug-abusing migrant, is found dead outside a local clinic. Westfall’s death became immediately suspicious to a clinic nurse who noted that he didn’t have overdose levels of drugs in his system. With an undetermined cause of death, foul play is suspected, and investigators descend on the case. Kazan suspects trial judge Craig Smith, who’s bisexual, because not only was he the last person to see Westfall alive (after a druggy dalliance with him), but he’s also been secretly romancing Briar. A race against time ensues as Kazan feverishly builds his case against his prime suspect, and Smith rushes to conceal evidence and exonerate himself before he jeopardizes his political career. While Kazan’s struggle for meaning is ever present throughout the novel, it’s often punctuated with overwrought prose, as when describing Kazan’s avoidance of a mundane daily existence: “He would never let the easily swallowed opioid of routine dissolve his lost and fractured soul.” Nevertheless, there is also some assured storytelling here; Hamilton effectively weaves past and present together to fill out not only Westfall’s gritty personal history, but also Kazan’s booze-soaked despair, bad luck, and personal and professional demons. Peripheral characters are also well rendered, including Smith, the nefarious judge. As the puzzle pieces of the mystery fall into place, Kazan seems to find his footing as a rejuvenated litigator and a man. Then the author drops an unexpected but plausible ending—one that will likely undermine any previous assumptions about his misunderstood legal-eagle protagonist.
A patchy read but with a twist ending that will dazzle fans of the genre.Pub Date: July 6, 2022
ISBN: 9781663240071
Page Count: 230
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2023
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
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
