Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.
Everyday people become entangled with unavoidable terrors in Kane’s collection of creepy tales.
The book begins with “Past Is Prologue,” in which Marcus vows to marry Rufina, a slave he’s completely fallen for. But their love blossoms in Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town that readers know Mt. Vesuvius will doom. Many of the 12 stories that follow are plays on familiar figures or horror scenarios. “The Last Bride” takes place in early 17th-century Hungary, where a certain Elizabet Bàthory makes a connection with a mercenary who goes by the name of Dracul. The titular “Suzanne” finds a potential romantic interest in police officer Jericho as the two bond while holed up in a local police station during a zombie apocalypse. The author offers a few selections that stray from more common genre tropes; “Dokkaebi” features a 1400-year-old shapeshifting goblin from Korean mythology. The author builds solid foundations for these tales, from the mood-setting environments (“Before Iraq, he never noticed the various shades of green sported by the aspens, oaks, walnuts, and other leafy trees of West Virginia. Soon the green would change to a blaze of yellows, oranges, and reds”) to the well-drawn casts. The characters include couples in unstable marriages; a ginseng hunter and his estranged surrogate father; and a popular doctor of theology alongside his president-elect son. Kane’s unadorned prose rarely lingers on the violent bits; his straightforward approach occasionally results in tales that, even with monsters in the mix, aren’t so scary. Still, he delivers shocking turns, whether in the form of a surprise ending or a character’s unexpected revelation. Galal’s black-and-white artwork accompanies each story, illustrating such haunting moments as grieving in the falling rain and recalling images from a fuzzy memory.
Striking characters drive this worthwhile batch of unnerving stories.Pub Date: May 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781087963365
Page Count: 280
Publisher: C2 Visionary Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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