A thrilling crime story, captivatingly dramatic and psychologically astute.
In DePrima’s thriller, a reporter investigates the attempted murder of her police officer fiance and follows an increasingly lurid trail of evidence.
J.T. Kennard (she generally answers to Jess) is content to live quietly; she’s a reporter in Kentucky who largely covers “all things equine,” often in the world of horse racing. Her placid existence is shattered by tragedy when her fiance, Joe Schuler, a Louisville Metro cop, is found gravely injured, apparently the result of a car accident during a terrible snowstorm. His skull is fractured, and he’s put on life support, with his prospects for recovery far from clear. After Jess speaks to Lieutenant Alex Washburn, Joe’s immediate supervisor, she concludes he wasn’t in an accident at all; he was a superb driver, and his worst injuries seem to have been inflicted after the crash—she surmises that he was forced off the road and then brutally beaten. Jess conducts an investigation of her own, one as journalistically painstaking as it is relentless. She is a memorable hero, strikingly drawn by the author. In a heated conversation with Joe’s doctor, she rebukes his suggestion that he may have been overly optimistic about Joe’s condition: “You think you’ve given us false hope. I don’t give a flying fuck about your emotional health. What are you going to do about Joe?” Eventually, another body is discovered in the same pond as Joe’s truck. The dead girl is Samantha Catlett, a college classmate of Joe’s son, Josh, and a girl who was unabashed about her crush on Joe. This discovery raises uncomfortable questions about why she was with Joe, and Jess aims not only to find those who attacked him but also to protect his reputation. This is a complex tale, but the author never permits it to descend into convoluted tail-chasing, even as Joe’s assault is revealed to be part of a larger, gruesomely dark conspiracy. The book is the best kind of hard-boiled crime drama—intelligently conceived, powerfully executed, and, for all its unpredictability, chillingly plausible.
A thrilling crime story, captivatingly dramatic and psychologically astute.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798987508824
Page Count: 300
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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