An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.
In Johnson’s crime novel set in the late 1990s, an inexperienced private eye in New York City unexpectedly gets mixed up in multiple murders.
It’s 1998, and 20-something Nico Kelly is a licensed PI who does mundane work for a lawyer named Finch, shadowing city employees suspected of committing insurance fraud. Specifically, he surveils supposedly injured workers, trying to catch them performing suspiciously vigorous activities. Nico’s personal life is also dismal. His father, once an “open-mic popular” musician, died of an overdose a few years ago, and he’s lost contact with his Ecuadorian mother, although he still sees his aunt, Cookie. Everything changes when Nico, on a routine job, gets videotaped footage of a cop’s murder by two fellow officers. Finch suggests giving the VHS tape to a former member of a police-corruption committee. After another murder, the officer assigned to the case, Detective Hong, looks at them as suicides, but Nico isn’t convinced—especially after his video camera is stolen from his apartment. Next, someone close to Cookie dies under strange circumstances, and she begs Nico to find out what happened. Now he’s doing “real PI shit,” including breaking into buildings and creating a fake identity, but his investigation may not yield the answers he wants. Johnson ably gives his story a vivid sense of atmosphere. Nico’s world is gritty but cool, populated with establishments like the Doray, a tavern with a black interior and exterior; the 24-hour record shop Accidental Records; and “self-aware” bar Max Fish, all sharing space with ever-present rats, cockroaches, and garbage; characters eat New York staples such as pizza and bialys. Johnson skillfully imbues it all with a clear sense of the time, when Rudy Guiliani was New York’s mayor; one character is convinced a Y2K computer meltdown is imminent, and Nico uses old tech like pagers and pay phones. Although the story centers on a navigation of societal corruption, the witty dialogue throughout and underachiever Nico’s wry narration (“I sort of got shot”) counteract the darkness, ultimately giving readers a cautious sense of hope.
An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798218524012
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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