A solid series starter that never flags in its sprint to a sinister climax.
An insurance investigator is the only thing standing between a high-powered law firm and its billion-dollar payday in Hemming’s thriller.
Nick Martin is the team leader on his prestigious Boston law firm’s Prosperity Fund initiative, which uses money from investors to buy people’s life insurance policies. Just as the Prosperity Fund stands on the verge of a billion-dollar listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Nick’s colleague (and lover) Jennifer Rose discovers that the fund is not in compliance with an obscure piece of federal legislation, rendering the sales of the life insurance policies to the fund invalid. This development sets him on a collision course with Mihkel Ivanov, a partner at the firm whose clients include KGB members and who is “notorious for his bad manners and ill-temper.” Some of the desperate people who sold their life insurance policies begin meeting untimely deaths, as do people within the firm who question the fund or want out. Nick and the fund come to the attention of Alex Greene, a Paris-based insurance investigator, described by her 13-year-old niece Hanna as “Nancy Drew on steroids.” The Prosperity case puts Alex in the crosshairs: a contract on her life is assigned to Joshua Workman, a former Mossad agent, who just happens to be a former one-night stand. In Hemming’s debut thriller, Greene makes a strong first impression. She’s a formidable action hero who feels her best when pummeling an adversary and who has a zest for sex to rival James Bond’s (“She could say ‘let’s fuck’ in any language”). Hemmings efficiently establishes Greene’s world for future adventures, giving her a backstory that includes a long-missing sister who abandoned Hanna on her doorstep. The author neglects to follow through on an early scene in which Greene trains Hanna in self-defense—the reader will want to see Hanna use those skills. But the ending is a corker that sets up a much-anticipated sequel.
A solid series starter that never flags in its sprint to a sinister climax.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781738736829
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ice Queen Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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.
