A cat-and-mouse tale done to a turn by a veteran who doesn’t waste a word or a tear.
A Los Angeles security guard’s act of heroism comes back to bite her.
Justine Poole is just doing her job when she follows Jerry and Estelle Pinsky from a fundraiser to their gated home and foils a robbery attempt by five men, two of whom she shoots dead. But that’s not how Mr. Conger, the crime boss who hired the crew for the job, sees it. He needs to maintain the reputation of his operation by making a strong statement about what happens to anybody who thwarts his plans. So even as Justine’s name springs into local headlines and she’s asked to do press interviews she has no intention of giving, methodical assassin Leo Sealy has already accepted a $50,000 down payment to liquidate her. After he kills her boss, Ben Spengler, instead of her, Spengler’s siblings terminate Justine’s contract to insulate Spengler-Nash Security from further fallout and warn her away from any contact with the co-workers who might have helped protect her. Needing an ally, Justine picks out crime reporter Joe Alston, who proves surprisingly helpful considering how little she tells him. In the meantime, Conger kicks things up a notch by encouraging the three thieves the police caught to claim they were ambushed by a vigilante, entangling Justine with the police and further tarnishing her reputation while Sealy draws a bead on her. When the skill sets of the hunted and the hunter, who reflects that Justine is “more of a problem than most,” are so evenly matched, luck will play a decisive role, and Justine’s luck can’t hold out forever.
A cat-and-mouse tale done to a turn by a veteran who doesn’t waste a word or a tear.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781613164778
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
IN THE NEWS
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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