An efficient and intriguing, if sometimes bumpy, crime tale.
A wealthy Sicilian businessman with shady connections handles threats and opportunities in this novel.
Life is good for 55-year-old Dr. Pasquale Nebrodi, a respected and affluent mover and shaker in Taormina. With his beautiful wife, Donna Rosa, he lives in a palatial villa lavishly supplied with contemporary art. Inspired by such favorite books as Machiavelli’s The Prince and Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz’s The Art of the Deal, Don Pasquale has a hugely ambitious project in view: a bridge across the Strait of Messina, something that’s been dreamed of since Roman times. The killing of Mafia boss Nunzio Rizzo removes one obstacle to the project, and Don Pasquale anticipates smooth sailing in the form of 650 million euros of funding from the European Investment Bank. When the bank declines to back the businessman, worried about Mafia entanglement, he has some maneuvering to do, flying to England to rally financial support from his London club, whose members include the unscrupulous wealthy. It’s a complicated deal with rich potential for several income streams, but Don Pasquale’s chances suddenly improve when convulsive Italian politics put him on the short list to head a technical government. Meanwhile, the case of a wandering man with amnesia whose notebook includes the name Don Pasquale is looked into by Inspector Filippo Bellini, a childhood friend of the entrepreneur’s. The amnesiac is Anthony Caruso of Toronto, as the petty thieves who assaulted him, Pippo Greco and Luca Mosca, learn from his stolen passport. With Pippo’s Canadian cousin, they try to extort half a million dollars from Caruso’s distraught wife, supposedly as ransom. Then Donna Rosa, convinced that her husband is cheating on her in England, jealously begins a dangerous affair with Don Pasquale’s PR man; Bellini investigates the deadly consequences. Just as Don Pasquale’s fortunes are rising to the greatest heights, downfall looms.
Manera, author of several novels as well as nonfiction books and a memoir, writes a fast-paced story that wastes no time in building to its climax. He shows a keen understanding of Italian and specifically Sicilian politics, business practices, and culture; matters such as the complicated Italian Parliamentary system are explained clearly, sometimes in helpful footnotes. He also makes good use of Mount Etna as a metaphor for Don Pasquale’s rise and possible fall, as Bellini suggests to him in a nice bit of foreshadowing: “Isn’t it amazing how peaceful Etna is most of the time? Yet, even when a mantle of snow covers its peak, there could be a devastating eruption. Sometimes, there are warning signs.” The ending provides satisfaction, with all the loose ends tied up. But the characterization doesn’t go very deep, consisting mainly of tagging each player with a few interests: Don Pasquale admires callous narcissists; Bellini is proud of his vineyard; Donna Rosa works to protect the environment on Mount Etna; and so on. Exposition can also be clumsy, as when Bellini explains to a Northern Italian that Milan is “Italy’s financial hub, as you must know,” together with tiresomely repetitive questions in the dialogue.
An efficient and intriguing, if sometimes bumpy, crime tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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