A vast and immersive international crime thriller.
In Nichols’ debut crime novel, an aggrieved private eye takes on some of the most powerful interests in Europe.
Back in the 1980s, Lenya Fischer served as an intelligence officer for the Stasi, where her attributes—“sneaky, stealthy, a deep-diver”—earned her the nickname Der Narwhal. Now, after a stint in prison for bribery, the 63-year-old is back on the street working as one of Europe’s most tenacious corporate investigators for hire. Her current case has her looking into the activities of Peter Brunner, the scion of a lumber empire who seems to be hiding something in his Cyprus-, Malta-, and Liechtenstein-based shell companies. It won’t be an easy job: “The Brunners have been a kind of power behind the throne all across Europe since the Holy Roman Empire,” a friend warns her. “They didn’t stay on top through two world wars by being nice. They don’t like to be investigated.” Luckily, Lenya is one of the only people in the world with access to the perfect man to probe Brunner’s holdings: Orell Schneider, the so-called “007 of Money Laundering” (and Lenya’s ex-lover) whose past employers include Liechtenstein’s Financial Intelligence Unit and the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority. When Orell is killed in a car bombing just days after Lenya tries to make contact, she knows she’s being sent a warning—if Orell’s death wasn’t clear enough, the killers also take the liberty of murdering Lenya’s cat, Fritz. Perhaps the Brunners don’t like to be investigated, but Lenya is not the sort of woman to back down once blood has been spilled. “Whoever did this was a ghost trying not to see the Grim Reaper,” she fumes. (“Lenya would hang on to the bottom of a car for a thousand miles to…watch the soul leave their eyes.”) Her investigation soon reconnects her with an East Texas spy she crossed swords with during the Lebanese Civil War, as well as a cavalcade of Russian mobsters, Corsican gun-runners, and other European ne’er-do-wells who stand between her and an international conspiracy the size of a continent.
In addition to the engaging revenge plot—which is more about avenging Fritz the cat than Orell—Nichols keeps his readers entertained with an endless supply of pseudonymous spies and criminal organizations. (For example: the Black Jackals, “founded by former Serbian special ops commandos who reinvented themselves as a gang of highly sophisticated international jewel thieves after the Balkans War in the Nineties.”) Lenya is a brilliant protagonist, a Russophile and true-believer who once reported her own husband for treason (he was executed) and who now finds herself doing the bidding of some of the world’s grossest capitalists. Nichols manages to pack the last 50 years of European conflict and interconnection into her personal history, illustrating how money and those who possess it circulate heedless of national borders. As the story unfolds, the vision of our tenuous global economy and democratic order that emerges is more terrifying than anything hidden in a Liechtenstein bank. Readers will undoubtedly look forward to Lenya’s next case.
A vast and immersive international crime thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798262559213
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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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