A riveting story with compelling characters—catnip for thriller fans.
A stolen religious relic drives the action in Kelly’s globe-trotting thriller.
Biblical archaeologist Maggie Shepherd leads a team in Bari, Italy, to extract a religious icon depicting St. Nicholas that the pope hopes to give to the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow. But the relic is purloined after its extraction by a man named Malachi Popov for the Russian mob, and soon after that, it’s stolen again. This leads to the unlikely pairing of Shepherd and Popov, who, after some soul-searching and observing what he believes to be the power of the relic, is determined to set things right. The story takes them to Moscow, the Vatican, and elsewhere around Italy as they work to unravel the secrets of the relic itself, determine who took it (and why), and whether it will be found in time for the pope’s visit to Moscow. Along the way, Shepherd and Popov must contend with the highest echelons of the Catholic Church and Russian mob to recover the relic while coming to terms with their own personal and religious issues. (Shepherd believes their partnership is preordained, as readers learn when Popov disappears and she searches for him: “She believed God had brought the two of them together to find answers, and they needed one another to finish their work.”) The text extends to more than 400 pages, but the narrative moves swiftly, a testament to Kelly’s storytelling abilities. The author excels at creating compelling personalities, not only for the main characters such as Shepherd and Popov, but also for the colorful supporting characters—no one seems superfluous. The standout is Shepherd, who is flawed, fascinating, and ultimately heroic; she is certainly worthy of further literary adventures. Reminiscent of Dan Brown’s work but with a tone and momentum all its own, Kelly’s yarn will delight thriller fans looking for an exciting read.
A riveting story with compelling characters—catnip for thriller fans.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781637632550
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forefront Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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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