A B-minus mystery that’s a straight-A legal thriller, with a final scene as satisfying as it is disturbing.
Defense attorney Dylan Aster’s unblemished trial record is threatened by an impossible case he gets sucked into.
Madeline Ismera, a public defender in Oregon’s Jackson County, reaches out to a friend in the DA’s office of Nevada’s Clark County to ask Dylan for help exactly because of his stellar reputation. The defendant she’s been assigned, diagnosed schizophrenic Arlo Ward, is accused of a horrific crime in Coyote Canyon: the slaughter, partial dismemberment, and lewd posing of three young campers (a fourth, Holly Fallows, escaped only by jumping off a cliff ahead of her shadowy pursuer). The police picked him up covered with blood very close to the crime scene, and he’s actually confessed to the murders in the hope of attracting media attention that will build the audience for the tell-all book he plans to write in order to leave the proceeds to his wife and daughter. Meeting with Arlo, Dylan and his law partner, Lily Ricci, quickly realize that the best defense they can possibly provide will have to contend with an obstacle even more daunting than ravenously competitive Jackson County DA Kelly Whitewolf: Arlo’s own refusal to plead not guilty. “I think he wants to believe he did this,” Madeline tells Dylan. What can a lawyer do when everyone he meets, from the prosecutor to the police to the witnesses to his own client, is determined to thwart his attempts to save the client’s life? The courtroom duels are correspondingly sharp even though the outcome seems like a forgone conclusion. Or does it?
A B-minus mystery that’s a straight-A legal thriller, with a final scene as satisfying as it is disturbing.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2266-8
Page Count: 349
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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