A complex, riveting thriller about shocking family secrets.
In this mystery, a woman learns startling truths about her family.
Lucy Gillespie’s wonderful life in Canada as a thriving artist with a devoted husband is forever changed when she learns she has inherited a substantial trust and a twisted family history. She meets her grandaunt Gracie Hogan, who, at the age of 96, is able to recall key stories about Lucy’s parents, grandparents, and more. Her recordings and Lucy’s own investigation lead to several striking revelations. But Lucy’s pursuit of the truth is challenged by figures who don’t want it disclosed. Juliette Garner is the lawyer who is responsible for the trust Lucy stands to inherit. Juliette’s great-uncles worked with Lucy's grandfather, but the women’s ancestors weren’t perfect, and Juliette is desperate to keep certain secrets from being unearthed. In addition, there is a strange man visiting Gracie who has his own warped connection to Lucy and her family. He wants the land and the money Gracie has now given Lucy, and he’ll do anything to get them. As Lucy continues to delve into her family’s past, she also uncovers her own unsettling memories. The stress of the sudden inheritance and the disturbing secrets begins to have an effect on her. She finds herself waking up in her studio (“her special place”) with finished paintings in front of her of a mysterious figure. Lucy soon discovers that following the clues to family mysteries may reveal more than she ever dreamed of or wanted. Gibbens has crafted a gripping series opener with unpredictable yet believable twists and turns. Lucy’s family’s history is reminiscent of a gothic horror story while her own drama resembles a modern thriller. The author skillfully mixes the dark doings of her unsavory characters with more lighthearted scenes between Lucy and her loved ones. Almost all of the players feel realistic, with intricate and credible character arcs. The tale’s villain is somewhat one-dimensional, but when the antagonist plays off such engaging heroes as Lucy and Gracie, the dialogue and the characters’ reactions make up for it.
A complex, riveting thriller about shocking family secrets.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-911291-9
Page Count: 306
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch’s 34th year proves to be his most eventful ever.
It begins when Mike, newly demoted from investigator, sees flames half a mile away and rushes into a burning house, where he’s too late to rescue Jenna Malloy or her husband, gym owner Brian. The only survivor is a baby girl Mike finds in the arms of a neighbor, Karen Kershaw. Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy Chet Bessel’s reaction to the tragedy tells Mike the deaths won’t be widely mourned. They’re not the only ones that won’t. Soon afterward, the discovery of Axl Deming’s body on the railroad tracks suggests that whoever killed the presumed rapist and murderer of teenager Emily Crockett is bent on vigilante justice. Since the victims are “two of the most hated people in Maine—three if you count Jenna Malloy,” suspects would seem to be everywhere. Mike, repeatedly warned off the case because he’s no longer an investigator, can’t resist focusing on Karen Kershaw, who fled the scene while he was questioning her, and Edward Gudgeon, a scallop diver who frequented the same bar as Axl and his ex-con brother, Shayn. Mike’s on the right track, but his quest will take a twisty route through many more ambushes, confrontations, brushes with fellow law officers who end up suspending him, and threats to his wife, EMT Stacey Stevens, and their newborn son, Charles. Doiron tightens this web with an insistent mastery that will keep most readers from noticing just how far-reaching it is until they’ve gained the end and can take some deep, cleansing breaths.
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!Pub Date: June 30, 2026
ISBN: 9781250864451
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
