A satisfyingly twisty thriller from a promising new voice in crime fiction.
In this debut novel, a series of baffling murders and mysterious threats leads three men on a quest for the truth.
In April 1987, life is routine and uneventful for Ed Underwood of Providence, Rhode Island. The personnel director for Barton Jewelry, Ed enjoys spending time with his girlfriend, Liz Reynolds, and practicing karate. When Henry Cohen, president of Barton Jewelry, receives a series of cryptic notes threatening payback, he asks Ed, who was a psychology major at Wesleyan, to review them and let him know if they are a prank or something more serious. Meanwhile, Mike Langan of the Providence Police Department is perplexed by the brutal and random killings of a man leaving a bar and a clerk working at an all-night donut shop. These murders attract the attention of Stan Osiewicz, a police reporter for the Providence Journal-Bulletin. Osiewicz initially suspects that the clerk’s murder may be Mafia-related, and his stories strongly suggest an organized crime angle until he receives anonymous letters indicating the deaths are connected to Barton Jewelry. As the murder investigations intensify, the danger hits close to home for Ed. He discovers that in a case this complex, everyone is a suspect, even Ed himself. Edwards’ tale is a taut and absorbing mystery that successfully weaves together several well-developed stories that unfold with calculated precision. At the center of the action is Ed, a mild-mannered man whose life is turned upside down when his employer’s business is threatened. The author does a fine job of developing Ed’s life outside work, including his relationship with Liz and his friendship with his sensei at the karate dojo, without losing the focus on the tale’s central mysteries. Langan and Osiewicz are similarly well drawn and would make compelling protagonists in future mysteries. The narrative is fast-paced and nuanced, with the perspectives in each chapter shifting among Ed, Langan, and Osiewicz as well as Lou DiNova, the head of the New England branch of the Mafia, a man concerned that he could be implicated in the unsolved murders.
A satisfyingly twisty thriller from a promising new voice in crime fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-912880-4
Page Count: 324
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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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