A moving and psychologically astute crime drama.
In this novel, a woman gets drawn into a criminal conspiracy by her wayward brother and must confront her family’s troubled past.
Cass Schmidt lives with her grandmother Tilly in the woods of Backus, Minnesota. Cass is haunted by twin sources of shame: her crushing poverty and her family’s ignominious past checkered with criminality. Her brother, Jack, shows up suddenly with a bag filled with money and buries it on Tilly’s property—he won’t divulge the details of the trouble he’s in, but Cass can only assume it’s deep. Then, Danny and Jesse, two of her cousins, the sons of her uncle George Bloom, a corrupt cop, show up. They are willing to resort to violence against her and Tilly to find the money and Jack. Cass learns that Jack stole the money from Harold Frost, a brutal drug dealer, but the details remain obscure. Her father, Vick, offers to help, but she hears rumors he might be in on the burglary, and he’s a reprobate criminal. In addition, he was a miserable father, and she suspects he might be responsible in some way for the death of her mother, Suzanne. Soukup deftly captures the desperation of Cass’ life, one that seems doomed from the start: “Her greatest fear had always been that she, too, would become another of the universe’s endless victims, not by misfortune, not by her own undoing, but by the sheer anonymity that is the universe’s might, this planet a belligerent rock hurled from its own apostatic hand, without impetus, without end.” His writing is gritty and authentic—the dialogue rings unerringly true—but it also achieves a poetic luminosity. Further, the taut tension that forms the narrative backbone of the plot never loosens for a moment. The author has composed a remarkable anatomy of a world caught in the grip of a vise—pulverized by the pressure of the past and a hopelessness about the future.
A moving and psychologically astute crime drama.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-925965-80-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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