A deep, deep dive into unspeakable memories and their unimaginably shocking legacy.
Twenty years after escaping a hyperextended childhood trauma, a peripatetic photographer touches down in Portland to find even grimmer nightmares awaiting her.
Marissa Mo was born into captivity. Her mother, Rosemary, had been kidnapped and impregnated by Chet Granger, and she gave birth to Marissa in the basement where she was kept. A few months later, another of his prisoners gave birth to Jenessa, and a third captive died four years later giving birth to Lily. Eventually Rosemary and the three girls escaped, but not really. Neither Chet’s imprisonment nor the cash settlement they’d received restored them to normalcy, and they’ve all, in their different ways and largely isolated from each other, been living on the brink ever since. Marissa, who’s taken the name Claire Lou, has decided to settle in the Oregon city that’s home to Jenessa and their two mothers. She quickly snags piecemeal work with the Portland Post and then a full-time job on the basis of pictures she’s snapped at the Four Alarm Brewery, which suddenly turn into pictures of possible suspects when the police find the body of a strip-club dancer in a tunnel beneath the pub hours later. A cryptic note reveals that Claire is being watched by someone who knows her horrifying past, someone who’s taunting her to be the first on the scene of subsequent tunnel murders. “This isn’t my first stalker,” she reflects; she’s been fleeing the spotlight ever since her escape from Chet. Now Marr presents the cherry on the sundae: Claire learns that Chet’s about to be paroled, and he wants to see her and become every inch the father he should’ve been back then.
A deep, deep dive into unspeakable memories and their unimaginably shocking legacy.Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2619-2
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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