An outlandish and entertaining comic thriller.
The pursuit of an erratic white-collar criminal becomes a crazy thrill ride.
In his fiction debut, screenwriter List’s skill set is on display from the opening scene of his fiction debut: Tough-as-nails retired NYPD detective Raymond Dawson is flummoxed and frustrated to find himself “bloodied, bound, and buck-naked” in the middle of nowhere, while next to him sits owlish ex–Amco Oil executive Wilbur Bailey, a fellow captive who watches a scorpion crawl over his shoe. The story rolls back from this vivid tableau to the road these two protagonists followed to get there. Wilbur’s dealings with shady Russian Mika Salko have landed him in the crosshairs of dogged IRS agent Phil Dancourt. Ray, a divorced ex-marine who took early retirement from the NYPD after being wounded on the job a handful of times, feels professionally adrift until he finds a lifeline in alluring Stephanie Morego. Wilbur, devastated by a cancer diagnosis and feeling heat from the law, goes on the run. A casual meeting between Wilbur, Ray, and Stephanie in an elevator begins a series of mishaps that eventually put Wilbur and Ray on a perilous path littered with a gallery of oddballs, with Phil in dogged pursuit as interpolated flashbacks fill in their backstories. List’s title aptly foreshadows the erratic plot. His energetic depiction of every episode, full of sharp character portraits and droll details, engages interest and keeps the story moving.
An outlandish and entertaining comic thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9798212337212
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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