Smartly plotted, violent, and utterly absorbing.
The murders of two men who couldn’t be less like each other entangle their widows in a web of prostitution, blackmail, murder, and eventually each other.
Grant Thomas was a successful professional in the Beltway suburb of Vienna, Virginia; Hector Ramirez was a hit man who plied his secret trade around Baltimore. After they’re gunned down in separate incidents on the same night, freelance writer Deb Linh Thomas goes into dazed mourning while bartender Cessy Castillo celebrates that the husband who’d beaten her for years is finally gone. Their paths begin an exquisitely slow convergence when Cessy is visited by two lowlifes who inform her that Hector had owed their boss $15,000, a debt that’s now passed to her, and FBI agent Levi Price tells Deb that Grant had dallied with a series of prostitutes, one of whom had milked him and his estate dry. As Cessy scrambles to find some way to deal with the collectors who won’t take no for an answer, Deb seeks her own answers by meeting with Maria Vasquez, the D.C. hooker who’d replaced her in her husband’s sex life and bank account. When Cessy’s resources prove inadequate to fend off the intensifying threats, her brother, Chris, rides to the rescue from Phoenix, his background as a contract killer guaranteeing fireworks even before the two women collide with each other. Barres stands out from the pack with his unusually sensitive handling of racial and sexual identities—Cessy's mother was Panamanian, Deb was born in Vietnam, and Deb's daughter, Kim, has a girlfriend—and his ruthless efficiency in sweeping supporting characters from the board the minute they’ve lost their ability to support anyone.
Smartly plotted, violent, and utterly absorbing.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-555-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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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