An artfully composed latticework of stories that captures the moral chaos of war.
In Mayfield’s historical novel, as World War II comes to a close, nine people with intersecting lives come to grips with their fates.
On May 7, 1945, the end of the war is celebrated in Times Square in New York City; it’s a huge event covered by Farley Sackstead, a legendary broadcaster and the “wartime voice of CBS Radio in Europe.” This voice serves as connective tissue in the author’s tangled skein of a plot, which chronicles the troubled lives of nine characters in both America and Europe. Farley is unaware of a mentally ill young man, Riley Blaine, who is on his way to Farley’s broadcasting booth to assassinate him; both the plan and the gun have been provided by the widow Selma Filbert, the “Cat Woman,” a profoundly disturbed person who finds Farley’s voice “very upsetting.” Riley, exasperated at being called an “imbecile” all of his life, is on a second mission, as well—he can’t wait to see Jenny Doyle, a 15-year-old from Queens, picked to sing the national anthem at the grand affair. Riley meets her when he is deemed mentally unfit and dismissed from the military after briefly serving with her brother Jimmy, a B-17 gunner still stationed in Germany. The author cleverly tracks the threads connecting each character with such deftness that the text, which initially reads like a collection of stand-alone short stories, is finally embroidered into a coherent whole. In one of the subplots, a Polish Jew, Antoni Pietkowski, is given the opportunity to interrogate Franz Stangl, an SS officer who presided over his captivity at the concentration camp in Sobibor; the emotionally wrenching experience is powerfully portrayed by Mayfield. The work can feel overstuffed at times—there are many subplots crammed into this short novel, which is less than 200 pages in length. Selma and Riley are the least developed characters, both little more than literary types. However, the other plotlines, despite their relative brevity, are surprisingly substantive, animated by an impressive psychological subtlety.
An artfully composed latticework of stories that captures the moral chaos of war.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781646035977
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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