Stone’s most memorable reflection: “He had been too long without a woman.” Yeah, right.
New York attorney Stone Barrington fights to protect a sizable estate from a predatory claimant determined to grab it from whomever stands in his way.
When Stone’s secretary, Joan Robertson, introduces him to her aunt, Annetta Charles, whose attorney at Stone’s firm, Woodman & Weld, has just died, Stone thinks her request to revise her will is routine. And so it is, on paper. Annetta, who rose from a shady background to marry into her late husband’s serious money, wants to continue paying $100,000 a month into the trust fund of her stepson, Edwin Charles Jr., but to cut him off without a cent at her death—because she wants to discourage him from killing her for the nest egg. Eddie, a Yale Law graduate who’s never worked a day in his life, reacts to the news that his do-nothing lifestyle depends on his leaving his stepmother alone with predictable outrage and a series of pleasingly unpredictable countermeasures. He bursts into Stone’s home office in Turtle Bay; accosts him at dinner with his former partner, NYPD Commissioner Dino Bacchetti; and tells everyone who’ll listen that he’s Stone’s client. The lie becomes especially fraught when Annetta is shot to death and Eddie’s arrested for her murder. Apart from Stone’s forgettable flings with two women involved in very different ways with Eddie’s threats, Woods keeps his eye on the ball throughout, and though the suspense never exactly intensifies—Woods doesn’t do rising suspense—Stone’s pesky antagonist is so well matched with both his hero and the requirements of his plot that fans’ interest will never flag. As a bonus, Stone’s self-effacing secretary is rewarded with a leading role and other emoluments.
Stone’s most memorable reflection: “He had been too long without a woman.” Yeah, right.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-54000-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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
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
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