A compelling, high-stakes story of mental illness and domestic violence.
In Cobey’s novel, a woman finds unlikely allies in her flight from an abusive husband.
The story opens in 1934 with a brief scene featuring William Fennerman, a Jewish engineer living in Germany feeling the tensions of rising antisemitism. The narrative quickly shifts to the 21st century and a woman named Joanne Arnet, who finds herself trapped in a marriage that’s suddenly turned into a nightmare. Her formerly loving husband, Michael, has become brutal and physically violent and seemingly doesn’t care about the change. “I’ve read that abusive husbands are sorry after they beat their wives,” Joanne tells her best friend, Darcy Gordon. “Not Michael, afterward he went back to Netflix and I drove myself to the hospital.” Darcy immediately hatches a plan: Joanne will leave Michael and come to Washington, D.C., to live with Darcy and her partner, Tabatha Lancaster. When Michael learns of the plan, he wounds Joanne and kills Darcy. Joanne later connects with both Tabatha and Fennerman, whose long, strange journey through life has brought him to a place in which he is able to help Joanne confront her problems. “There were men who presupposed as their inalienable right, the total degradation of the women unfortunate enough to fall in love with them,” readers are told. “He detested the species.” The author has a wobbly command of punctuation and usage (when readers are told that William towered over most Japanese people, Cobey writes, “By Japanese standards, he had no contemporaries”), but he takes a standard story of domestic abuse into intriguing places. This is typified by the quirky detail of the trident Tabatha sketches on a piece of paper, its three points standing for “Physical Health,” “Mental Health,” and “Financial Health,” with the trident itself functioning as a potent symbol in her search for Michael.
A compelling, high-stakes story of mental illness and domestic violence.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798858175049
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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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