A taut, gripping tale of murder, therapy, and duplicity.
A California psychotherapist faces the exposure of her secrets when her ex-husband and his wife suffer brutal deaths in this thriller.
Dr. Ava Lawson is taken aback by the deaths of Ian and Kate Culpepper, known as the Love Doctors for their short-lived reality TV show. Ava was married to Ian, who left her several years ago for Kate. When Ava’s boyfriend, cop Luke Donovan, asks her when she last saw Ian, she lies. That’s because her most recent contact with Ian involved a memory card with something incriminating. But after the police rule the Culpeppers’ deaths a double homicide, they’re looking at Ava for it, as a dying Ian had apparently written her name in blood. At the same time, an anonymous caller vaguely threatens Ava: “I know what you did.” Ava believes this is karma, in response to something “unforgivable” that she and Ian did. But she won’t sit idly by while someone frames her for the homicides, such as attempting to plant the murder weapon on her. Ava knows a handful of individuals with motives for killing the Culpeppers, and though she’s lying to Luke and others, she isn’t the only one being deceitful. This is the third installment of Kane’s (The Hanging Tree, 2018, etc.) thematically linked Doctors of Darkness series. The volume is just as bleak as that title suggests, as Ava throughout engages in shady, sometimes criminal behavior. But many of the author’s intricately drawn characters are less than savory, which makes for a grim story but also a more likable Ava, because her deeds aren’t as shocking as others’ actions. The tightly written narrative becomes a white-knuckle, ticking clock, as the police investigation zeros in on Ava and she gets closer to a killer. Kane skillfully bounces the plot from present day to intermittent flashbacks, chronicling the pre- and post-years of Ava’s marriage to Ian. Likewise, periodic newspaper articles and exposés keep the public—and readers—updated with details on the ongoing homicide case.
A taut, gripping tale of murder, therapy, and duplicity.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-578-40133-1
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Ellery Kane Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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