Fiery on many levels, Murphy’s uneven debut nonetheless makes her an author to watch.
At a Southern California college campus, rape and sudden death are on the rise.
“If she’s female, start between the legs. Dad taught me that, his hand on mine, the knife between us.” This creepy childhood memory of field-dressing a kill is our introduction to Sarah, protagonist of Murphy’s choppy debut: an uneasy mashup of a druggy campus novel and a feminist revenge thriller, with wildfires blazing and ash raining down in the background. Sarah is about to complete her graduate work in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Teresa; her best friend and party buddy is her classmate Nathan, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune who has taken a vow of celibacy. The UCST campus has a tunnel on whose walls the names of students who have died over the past few academic years are graffitied, continually updated and restored after each official whitewashing. Next to the names are notations: “miss you, love you” and sometimes “rapist.” Just a few pages in, Sarah will have to add Nathan’s name to the list, as she finds him dead in his bed with a needle in his arm. But it’s the wrong arm and the wrong drug, so she suspects foul play. Maybe the student who violently raped her a few years ago, known only as Rapist? Maybe his sidekick, Flopsy, who mouths curses and spits at her whenever he gets the chance? There are many rapes and rapists in this novel, and the theme of rape culture is yoked to a wild horse of a plot that rockets from a visit with Nathan’s ethereal, fabulously wealthy sister, to a data-hunting expedition in a Title IX office, to a job talk at an academic conference, to a bizarre twist near the end that seems like it could be from another book entirely.
Fiery on many levels, Murphy’s uneven debut nonetheless makes her an author to watch.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593801499
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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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