A thrilling Southern whodunit anchored by a grizzled, whip-smart main character.
A placid Arkansas delta town is rocked by a child’s grisly murder in this series mystery set in the late 1950s.
Holland’s latest novel finds White military veteran–turned–police chief Big Ray Elmore on high alert after the body of Esther Alice King, a young Black girl, is discovered floating facedown in the local river with blunt-force head trauma. The chief, who’s still tormented by symptoms of PTSD from his war experience, isn’t used to such horrific crime in his small town, but he’s quick to begin his investigation with fellow officer Curtis Jim LaBelle, questioning locals who last encountered Esther, a girl who was just a bit older than his own sons. Holland’s enthralling mystery quickly springs into action with plenty of dramatic developments and plot twists. The racist town sheriff, Cecil Cooper, and the county coroner drag their feet on the investigation, and Elmore suspects that abrasive local Carl Trimble and others in a racist “nocturnal organization” may be involved. Short, clipped chapters keep the pages turning as Elmore digs deeper into the town’s history of bigotry; meanwhile, his married life becomes messy as his feelings for Carl’s abused wife, Grace, a former flame, get more complicated. Add in a lengthy drought and a “rainmaker” who has more dirt on the local townsfolk than anyone else, and the result is a mystery with brio to spare. The dialogue is rife with old Southern vernacular and derogatory innuendo that suit the time and place, and although the book is a bit overlong, it’s a solid addition to Holland’s impressive oeuvre, which also includes a forensic mystery/thriller series starring Dr. Kel McKelvey. The author’s characterization and plotting are on-point as he draws on his expertise as a forensic scientific director with the Department of Defense to keep the details accurate.
A thrilling Southern whodunit anchored by a grizzled, whip-smart main character.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-68-775623-5
Page Count: 421
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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