A layered spy novel helmed by a remarkable female agent.
In Vincenti’s World War II thriller, a young Swedish spy makes her mark.
Vincenti, whose last work was The Sandman (2018), creates a smart, fearless lead in Glenda Paal, a “linguistic chameleon.” At 16, Glenda is spending the summer working for the Swedish Legation in Berlin, where she meets German spies, falls in love, and becomes pregnant. In 1939 Sweden, having a child out of wedlock is illegal, so Glenda’s father uses his undercover contacts to smuggle her to Canada after she gives birth to a son. At a British-run training camp, she receives combat and spy training. In Ottawa, Glenda fosters a relationship with Russian intelligence and subsequently becomes a triple agent to defeat Nazism. While working for the Canadians, she’s supposedly spying on her Russians contacts for the Germans. She develops multiple personas and successfully completes missions involving defections and smuggling people to safety all while juggling three demanding spy agencies. Glenda finds herself on an even more dangerous mission when she’s assigned to the Manhattan Project compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where her identity and intentions are thoroughly scrutinized. There she witnesses the first atomic bomb explosion, the “devil’s dawn” of the book title. Glenda just hopes the war will end soon so she can join her son and parents in Sweden and maybe reconnect with her German boyfriend. Glenda is a stellar, larger-than-life (in good spy-genre style) lead. She does have a few minor flaws to humanize her, such as confusing the makeup styles of two of her personas. Vincenti’s nail-biter has a dauntless hero at its center and capably renders the realities of World War II. J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Stalin, and other historical figures make memorable appearances. The novel also does a fine job of exploring Sweden’s attempt to remain neutral in the war, the realities of living in a makeshift community in the desert, and the morality of making a terrible weapon to end a terrible war.
A layered spy novel helmed by a remarkable female agent.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
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