A suspenseful crime story with deft plotting and a resourceful, well-developed protagonist.
A New York City detective races against time to stop a terrorist attack in Venice, Italy, in Ceron’s thriller.
Although this assured thriller is the author’s first full-length novel, he introduced its protagonist Miles in a previous novella, Death of the Saltwater Blonde (2022). Miles Jordan—“Detective First Grade New York Police Department, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Officer, and Jamal’s Big & Tall Gold Star Customer”—is in Venice as part of a counterterrorism force partnering with the Italian military police. The mission: use captured sleeper agent Aarzam El-Hashem as bait to catch the elusive terrorist known as the Scorpion, assumed to be targeting the Israeli prime minister during the latter’s visit to the city in a few days. The task force’s plans go awry, and the arrogant, ambitious commander of the Venice Carabinieri, Col. Giuseppe Marino, blames Miles. However, the Scorpion sees Miles’ persistence and tendency to think outside the box as the real threats to him. Miles, who is Black, is about to be removed from the case by the American special agent in charge, a racist, “hardline good ol’ boy”; however, a clandestine meeting with a CIA operative opens new lines of inquiry and buys him more time. Ceron’s fast-paced, multilayered plot encompasses a meeting at the Roman Catholic Church archdiocese with an outspoken anti-Islam cardinal, a disturbing encounter with the leader of a shadowy organization of terrorist Catholic fanatics, and even a possible mole within the Carabinieri. The villains are a bit shallowly developed, but this is mitigated by the novel’s overall emotional resonance, particularly in the poignant tale of desperate father Nabeel Haddad, who unknowingly gets caught up in the lethal plot, and Miles’ burgeoning relationship with the haunted, Somalia-born Kamaria Uba of the Carabinieri.
A suspenseful crime story with deft plotting and a resourceful, well-developed protagonist.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 979-8986255415
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Gold Coast Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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