A riveting crime tale involving slippery police dealings.
A political scandal rocks the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany.
Sarda’s gripping second novel—like his debut, Cash-n-Carry (2012)—is a crime thriller. With the verve of a James Bond escapade, the tale’s first scene sets the high-velocity plot in motion. Lars Hanson, a homicide detective, is at a blackjack table when a mysterious goon known as “the giant” targets him. Hanson bolts out the door and hits the streets of Hamburg on his Harley. Soon, a black van accelerates “into his path, its battering ram nearly grazing his right leg.” Because of the complex storyline and intertwined subplots, this isn’t the kind of novel that readers can follow if they gloss over occasional passages. The text is tightly written and challenging, with about 30 characters in key roles in a high-stakes political power scheme. High on the cast list are police investigators Thomas Ritter, a former special-ops commando, and his new partner, Motz Beck, who has ties to the Mafia. They eventually learn that the last person in the world they should trust is each other. A new character (or two) barges into each chapter. Some are likable and others, anything but, yet all will pique readers’ curiosity. (At the end of the book, Sarda provides a useful feature: a roster of the names and roles of the main characters.) The story’s mix creates a Fellini-esque sensation as scenes change at a dizzying speed. The disjointed action thunders nonstop through the red-light district of Hamburg, where a major police and political scandal unfolds. Some sex workers have important roles in the tale. Along the way, the author delivers several surprises. In one bizarre scene, Motz goes to a cemetery, pulls up a plant beside a grave, and starts digging with a spade. He finds five plastic-coated bricks, each containing a stack of 50 euro notes that Hanson stole from the police station’s property room. Amid this serious business, Sarda sprinkles in lighter moments (“Needles of rain pelted” Hanson’s face “as he weaved in and out of bike paths....A kid waved at him from one of the windows”). The absorbing story will keep readers guessing until the final pages.
A riveting crime tale involving slippery police dealings.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-3-9822665-2-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Highway 99 Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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