An involving thriller that ably juggles themes of love, loyalty, and risk.
A would-be actor gets caught up in his family’s illicit arms dealing.
As Paul’s novel opens, Asif al Faid, a wealthy, powerful black-market arms dealer, is ill and slowly dying. Given his line of business, he has some regrets, but none sharper than having involved his nephew Azar in his dangerous business. Sixteen years earlier, upon the birth of his daughter, Azar decided to distance himself from the family enterprise. But when his uncle informs Azar of the existence of a ledger citing the atrocities committed by the criminals he’s done business with, Azar realizes he may not be able to walk away so easily. Asif has “unfinished business” with the Pakistan Liberation Party and thinks they may only accept dealing directly with Azar, drawing him closer to his uncle’s world and further away from his own world of professional acting. In Karachi, he meets Dr. Maya Singh, who’s working with Doctors Without Borders in order to process her chaotic feelings after her husband of 28 years left her for another woman. Azar and Maya feel an almost immediate personal connection, and although Azar is married, he invites her to spend time with him. As their relationship deepens, Maya unwittingly gets drawn into Azar’s orbit. Paul pursues this overlay of a conventional romance with an appealing directness. And he has a talent for sculpting the personalities of the cast, from Azar’s family to Maya’s ex-husband, Dev. The international crime thriller storyline is also well handled as the stakes are raised for Azar and Maya. The prose can sometimes lapse into tired clichés—“wolves in sheep’s clothing,” “deafening silence,” etc.—but Paul manages the book’s two main plots—romance and crime—with enough skill to keep the pages turning.
An involving thriller that ably juggles themes of love, loyalty, and risk.Pub Date: June 15, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 31, 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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