Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.
In this mystery set in 2002, a Manhattan lawyer joins his sheriff brother’s murder investigation in the siblings’ hometown.
Tom Morgan’s plans for a relaxing beach vacation change at the last minute. The attorney returns home to Coldwater, an upstate New York town, to help care for his recently injured mother. But on the day he arrives, a body surfaces in the community’s eponymous lake, which shares its shoreline with Quebec. As Tom’s family doesn’t want him on his phone all week, his younger brother, Joe, the town sheriff, suggests he occupy his time by helping solve the murder. The lawyer may have a further incentive as well—he knew the victim, Billy Pearce, the brother of Tom’s high school sweetheart, Susan. The Morgans quickly zero in on a local bio-research company where Susan works. The company is in the same building Billy supposedly broke into mere weeks ago. It’s not long before Tom reconnects with Susan as well as others from his past, including a thuggish man he scuffled with at a high school dance. After a mysterious illness shockingly sidelines Joe, Tom is on his own, no longer under the protection of his brother who carries a gun and has hefty muscles. It seems several people had a motive to want Billy dead, and almost as many were willing to make it happen. As Tom draws closer to unmasking a killer, he has run-ins with dangerous individuals who may put the attorney in the line of fire. Complicating matters further is the possibility that people in Coldwater harbor startling secrets—including Tom’s brother.
Ross fills his mystery with realistically flawed characters. For example, the Morgans’ mother, though she unquestionably loves her sons, mercilessly criticizes Tom—for being single, childless, and a workaholic as well as not visiting often enough. Setting this novel in the protagonist’s hometown gives the story a rock-solid foundation; though Billy had been a troubled man, Tom remembers him as the little boy who would “tag along” on his dates with Susan. At the same time, a gloomy history burdens Tom and Joe—their father also held the job of sheriff, and his life ended in a brutal homicide. Narrative tension gradually rises; along with his solo investigation, Tom has problems back at his law firm, as his link to a decade-old construction project may cost him his job. He’s moreover surrounded by deceitful people, most of whom seem quite capable of murder. This dodgy cast couples nicely with the moody ambience; as it’s October in a town just south of Canada, a perpetual chill affects everyone and renders Coldwater Lake a dark, icy crime scene. Fortunately, Tom’s dry wit offers welcome relief from the generally serious tone. His initial interrogations are hilariously blunt: “My little brother wants to know where you were on Saturday night.” Even after becoming a more skilled investigator, he’s still cheeky; responding to someone asking if he has an ID, Tom says: “None that would mean anything to you.” Though revealing the murderer involves copious theories and prolonged explanations, the story never lingers as it forges ahead to a gratifying conclusion.
Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953789-54-9
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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