An absorbing tale and an adept examination of grief.
A mother hunts for her daughter’s killer in Kane’s latest psychological thriller in a series.
Dr. Mollie Roar was once a successful psychologist working at Napa State Hospital in California. However, the kidnapping and murder of her 15-year-old daughter, Dakota, two years ago led to the dissolution of Mollie’s marriage to Dakota’s father, Cole, and now Mollie spends much of her time drinking or going to a support group for grieving parents. There, she finds solace in her friend and occasional lover, Grant Sawyer. Dakota’s murder is still unsolved, but rumor has it that the perpetrator is the Shadow Man, a prolific serial killer who’s local to Napa. When terminally ill Vietnam veteran Wendall Grady begins seeing Mollie as a therapy client to confess his past sins, he reveals information that fuels her desire to further investigate her daughter’s murder. A parallel plotline set before the teen’s death shows Dakota’s increasing interest in serial killers—the Shadow Man, in particular—and her involvement in an online sleuthing forum. Mollie, in the present, learns more about her child and tries to piece the truth together while coming to terms with her own guilt about her flawed parenting. Kane’s stellar fourth book in her Doctors of Darkness series stays true to the conventions of the thriller genre, building anticipation and exploring untrustworthy characters, without ever feeling formulaic. Mollie’s chapters, in particular, are filled with anguish: “The drawer stays shut, but I know the past is alive inside it. It’s unburied now. And it may as well be a hand clawing up from its shallow grave to seize me by the throat.” The juxtaposition of Dakota’s investigations into the Shadow Man works very well and effectively develops a sense of intrigue. The teenager isn’t merely a murder victim, but a well-developed character; she reluctantly learns that her parents are imperfect, deals with boys who want too much too soon, and has disagreements with her best friend. Mollie is also a fully realized figure who’s both unlikable and sympathetic, by turns.
An absorbing tale and an adept examination of grief.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73-367015-9
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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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