An exciting, snowy murder mystery.
A private investigator takes on an insurance case and uncovers a conspiracy in Borg’s mystery novel.
In France, skier Colin Burns dies breaking a speed record (he “windmilled for 300 yards before his limp body, flailing like a rag doll, came to a stop”), but something about his death is suspicious. A few months later, in Tahoe, private investigator Owen McKenna finds an abandoned dog and gets a call from Geneviève Laurent, Colin’s girlfriend, who enlists his help with an issue related to Colin’s life insurance. Owen meets with her, and she provides him with a wealth of information about Colin’s life, friends, and family. Owen also questions Colin’s oversharing friends. He discovers that the abandoned dog, Lazlo, belonged to the chef at the Hungarian restaurant where Colin used to work; that chef, János, has gone missing. Owen pursues a copy of Colin’s autopsy report because he suspects foul play on the part of the insurance company—the autopsy indicates an unlikely injury. Then, Geneviève’s restaurant burns down—likely the result of arson—after she’d been harassed by a group of men extorting money from local restaurants. As Owen digs into both cases, he and his family find themselves in danger. The idea that gravity might not have been the culprit in Colin’s death should have been introduced sooner—there’s an inkling of that in the prologue, but it initially seems that Owen is doing a lot of investigative work that feels above and beyond due diligence for an insurance claim. This is an ongoing series, so readers get a peek at Owen’s personal life through his endearing relationships with his long-term girlfriend, Street, and her adopted daughter, Camille. Dog lovers will enjoy the near-constant presence of several pooches. The novel contains some great action and suspense sequences, and the main characters are fully fleshed out and feel authentic. Borg also offers a lot of engaging local details about Tahoe. Overall, this series installment works just fine as a standalone mystery, and it’s a fun read.
An exciting, snowy murder mystery.Pub Date: July 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781931296335
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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