A brooding novel of loyalty and corruption set on Chicago’s South Side.
In Allen’s novel, a low-level politician on the verge of retirement struggles to hold his family together in the aftermath of a murder.
One more election—that’s all Pat Sullivan, precinct captain of Chicago’s 51st Ward, has to make it through. For 32 years, he’s been in charge of curb repair, potholes, snow removal, and turning out votes in his working-class South Side neighborhood. Pat is preparing a final push to re-elect alderman Eddie Byrne, after which he plans to finally retire and move with his wife, Mary, out of the city. Pat’s plans are shattered when he learns that his daughter-in-law Janice has been murdered, and that her husband—Pat’s son Tom—has been arrested as the primary suspect. Pat puts up his house and savings in order to bail Tom out of jail, only for his son to immediately go on the lam. If Pat can’t get Tom into court within 30 days, his life’s earnings will be forfeited—and to top it all off, Mary reveals to him that she’s dying of breast cancer. To save what’s left of his family, Pat must track down Tom and figure out what really happened to Janice. Along the way, he will have to contend with a dogged police detective who’s sure of Tom’s guilt, a reformed drug dealer turned major political donor, and a colorful assortment of lowlifes who could only come from the Windy City. Allen’s conversational prose captures his milieu, particularly the relatively underexplored world of political machine turnout operations. (“The energized crowd started to file out of the hall, milling about in front, most holding literature and flyers to be passed out during the evening to each house in the ward.”) Less a traditional crime yarn than a literary novel with some genre elements, the book will please readers with its strong sense of place and culture.
A brooding novel of loyalty and corruption set on Chicago’s South Side.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798892820882
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2024
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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