Delivers all the guilty pleasures the title promises and leaves you pathetically grateful for your own petty social circle.
Days after a party celebrating the perfect New York couple's first anniversary, the roster of guests who’ve survived it is suddenly decreased by one.
Jessica and James Sommers have the ideal marriage. Of course, every marriage has its hiccups. Realtor Jessica left her first husband, high school biology teacher Wayne Fiske, and art dealer James left his first wife, investment banker Haley Sommers, following an adulterous affair. Wayne has forgiven Jessica enough to show up at the party, and Haley, who’s had a lot of time on her hands since getting fired from her high-paying job, violates a restraining order to sneak in so she can interrupt the happy couple’s anniversary toasts by announcing exactly what she thinks of them. Jessica and Wayne’s 17-year-old son, Owen, who survived a bout of leukemia four years ago, is told that it’s returned and that the frightfully expensive experimental treatment his oncologist recommends won’t be covered by insurance. James, desperate to earn more money he can give Jessica for her son, lets Reid Warwick, who has his eye on Jessica, suck him into a highly questionable deal to sell some Jackson Pollock sketches of dubious provenance. In short, virtually everyone in the cast acts as if they have a target on their back, and it’s a shame that only one of them will get bashed to death. Once he’s created his sublimely bitchy ensemble of well-groomed users and losers, Mitzner lets them run amok, subject only to their amour propre and their determination not to knuckle under to NYPD Lt. Gabriel Velasquez’s plaintive requests for the DNA samples that will end up fingering the perp.
Delivers all the guilty pleasures the title promises and leaves you pathetically grateful for your own petty social circle.Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0576-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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