More good fun from a master storyteller.
Motherhood is no barrier to crime busting in this clever thriller.
Mickey Gibson is an ex–crime scene tech, ex-cop, ex-detective, and a single mother of two tykes, including one who's been known to throw up on her. She works at home as an investigator for ProEye, chasing down criminals online, and she is quite good at it. Her ex-hubby, the rat, had said he wanted a big family but bugged out on her when the “daddy do list” “ruined” his weekends. Now a phone call turns her life upside down. A woman she doesn't know, ostensibly from ProEye, asks her to do some fieldwork: inventory the contents of an old mansion. The woman at first goes by Arlene, but she might really be Clarisse or Francine. In other words, “she’s a liar, plain and simple,” and she has strong motivation to get Mickey involved. Naturally, the contents of the mansion include a murder victim, a smelly corpse that had once been “a criminal on a global scale.” Mickey feels compelled to solve the crime, though she’s emphatically told “it’s not your job to solve this sucker. You’re not a cop anymore.” More murders follow as the possibility of a hidden treasure looms. Two strong, engaging women drive the complicated plot—the multitasking mom who’s compelled to solve a crime while defending against threats to her children, and the childless manipulator who has her own big-time personal issues. She—let’s call her Clarisse for now—has the best lines: “Hell, with just the right eyeliner I can rule the world,” and “Life was a shell game. The winners could just hide the truth better than everybody else.” And she has a lot to hide. In the end, the plot elements are all tied up in a neat little bow.
More good fun from a master storyteller.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5063-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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