An engaging Mafia story spiked with some surprises.
An ambitious prosecutor and a newbie mob attorney face off in this debut legal thriller.
After three years working as a lawyer in the Palm Beach County Public Defender’s Office in Florida, 29-year-old Jason Noble is burned out. “Being an assistant public defender is like working in dog years,” he tells his boss. And Jason knows a lot about canines, as his English bulldog, Caesar, is his constant companion at home and on business-related road trips. After Jason opens his own law practice, business is initially slow. But things heat up after mobster Antonio “Magic Man”Barrera, charged with three counts of murder, is advised by one of “the best lawyers in the country” that it’s an unwinnable case. The lawyer, Peter “the Great” Cohen, suggests hiring an inexperienced former public defender so “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel” can ultimately be proved. Enter Jason, who will spar with prosecutor Trevor Wittingham, a gubernatorial candidate running in a special election. Wittingham believes the conviction of a reputed mob boss will ensure his ascent “to the governor’s mansion,” so he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win the case. In Morse’s story, verbal and physical cruelty—a wife continually berating her husband; trafficked victims suffering before being killed; a mobster getting mutilated before being thrown to the gators—piles on to the point of diminishing returns. Mobspeak—including terms such as “fuhgeddaboudit”—lifted from B gangster films sounds clichéd. Nicknames are overused—to name a few: Vinnie “The Bag” Respi, Mario “Lug Nut” Rizzo, and attorney Tim “Butt-Kisser” Barnes.There’s nothing woke about the female characters: sex workers, crabby wives, and “doe-eyed” stunners. But courtroom scenes read authentically, and the author knows the South Florida area, citing, for example, “The Chart Room, where Truman Capote penned his final novel and Jimmy Buffett and Bob Marley played their first gigs.” A courtroom reveal and an unexpected ending are more than satisfying.
An engaging Mafia story spiked with some surprises.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Come for the action, leave deeply moved by the fiercely beautiful meditations on maternal love.
How far would a mother go to save her daughter?
Simone Seaborn leaves her home in London for southwest Texas to meet her teenage daughter, Lucy, who’s spent the summer there before starting college. The two have planned a camping trip as a reunion after the longest period they’ve ever spent apart. But almost immediately, the trip seems cursed: Simone’s suitcase is lost—maybe even “on the moon,” according to an airport attendant. She and Lucy are reunited at their Airbnb stopover, only for Simone to wake in the morning and find Lucy missing. Left behind: a phone that begins to ring, “Caller Unknown.” Lucy has been kidnapped. Simone immediately snaps into action, following all the kidnapper’s instructions, including not to notify the police, a decision that her husband, Damien, strongly opposes. She travels to the meeting place only to be sent across the border to Mexico, where she must pick up a package and bring it back to Texas. Simone and Lucy are eventually reunited, but by then things have gone very wrong: Simone shoots the messenger who brings Lucy to the meetup, and then Lucy accidentally shoots an off-duty cop who’s coming to investigate the noise. On the run in the rural Texas desert, mother and daughter strike out to save each other and to clear their names. The plot is convoluted, and even a little absurd, but it keeps you guessing. What truly shines through in McAllister’s fluid prose, though, is the love. This is a novel about motherhood, and mothers and daughters, and the transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s about sacrifice and loss, but also joy, and the tenuous beauty of each moment of life. It’s about saving the day in even the direst of circumstances, and how love between a parent and child is never a loan, but exists forever—past, present, and future—even as time inevitably slips by.
Come for the action, leave deeply moved by the fiercely beautiful meditations on maternal love.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780063338470
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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