Dark, darker, and then some. But readers who can take it are in for quite a ride.
The last case between a federal prosecutor and the retirement she craves will take her to some truly harrowing places.
Four weeks after Kathy Pharr was sexually assaulted and beaten to death, police called to another house on Crimson Lake Road made a gruesome discovery with a surprise ending: Though, like Kathy, she’s draped in the trappings of one of 1960s Kenyan painter Sarpong’s four indelible pictures of death, yoga teacher Angela River isn’t quite dead herself. Even so, Cason Baldwin, of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, homicide detective Lucas Garrett of the Las Vegas Sheriff’s Office, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Yardley of the Special Victims Unit all treat Angela as a second victim of the monster that freelance reporter Jude Chance has dubbed the Crimson Lake Executioner. Since Kathy’s 14-year-old daughter, Harmony, went missing shortly after her mother was killed, the obvious suspect is Kathy’s husband, Tucker, who’s already served time for kidnapping Sue Ellen Jones 18 years ago. But Yardley’s growing friendship with Angela soon diverts her attention from Tucker Pharr to Angela’s live-in lover, ER physician Michael Zachary, and the evidence the police find in Zachary’s garage is as damning as the tone of Angela’s voice when she tells Yardley she never wants to see her again. Confronted in court by the unexpectedly resourceful Dylan Aster, who talks Zachary into accepting his representation and then sets himself resolutely against the presiding judge, Yardley’s forced to consult the expert on painting and serial murder she’d sworn never to see again: her ex-husband, Eddie Cal, who’s been imprisoned ever since sending 12 victims to their graves in A Killer’s Wife (2020).
Dark, darker, and then some. But readers who can take it are in for quite a ride.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2094-7
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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