How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.
A widowed Pennsylvania dad hears from his estranged daughter on the occasion of her marriage into the 1 percent.
Frank Szatowski, 52, has achievements he’s proud of: “I started driving young, straight out of the army, and I was recently inducted into the Circle of Honor, an elite group of UPS drivers who’ve worked twenty-five years without an accident.” What Frank doesn’t feel so good about is his relationship with his daughter, Maggie, who cut him off a few years ago when he failed her in some as-yet-unrevealed way. But now the "Unknown Caller" on his phone is her, inviting him to Boston to meet her fiance, Aidan Gardner, and to walk her down the aisle at their wedding. From the moment he steps from the elevator into the penthouse Maggie and Aidan share, Frank feels like a fish out of water, and things only get more uncomfortable when Aidan shows no interest in connecting with his future father-in-law. The wedding is held at a private camp in New Hampshire, exquisitely imagined from the waterfront cottages to the brunch buffets to the 10-foot-high security fence. Even before he’s given a 56-page “privacy doc” to sign and ordered to turn his watch ahead 15 minutes to “Gardner Standard Time,” Frank knows there’s something deeply wrong—for one thing, he’s received a flyer in the mail linking Aidan to a local missing person. But his sister, Tammy, is having the time of her life, as is her 10-year-old foster kid, Abigail, and he’s finally mending fences with Maggie; can’t he just kick back and enjoy? Actually…no. In addition to creating a fun, propulsive plot, Rekulak does a great job on all the status details and supporting characters, from the sleazy family lawyer with his barely legal wife to the younger crowd at the wedding. At the welcome dinner, a woman with “a starfish tattoo and long blond hair braided into ropes” offers Frank an Altoids tin of gummy bears. “These are THC with a little extra wild card,” she tells him encouragingly. Hoo boy. There are some wild cards, all right.
How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781250895783
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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