Not the best Deaver to offer friends you are hoping to get as firmly hooked as you are.
Colter Shaw, the freelance bounty hunter who debuted in The Never Game (2019), infiltrates a cult masquerading as a grief support group.
Despite the usual hard-nosed competition from his rival, Dalton Crowe, Shaw has no trouble locating suspected neo-Nazis Adam Harper and Erick Young, sought for burning a cross on the grounds of a church, and turning them over to the police. That’s when everything goes sideways, for the law in this case is so lawless that Adam would rather kill himself than be arrested, and Erick narrowly escapes with his life. Troubled enough to look into the fugitives’ histories, Shaw is led to the Osiris Foundation, a for-profit enclave in the mountains of Washington, which had clearly changed Adam’s life. Turning the hefty reward the Western Washington Ecumenical Council had offered for their apprehension over to Erick’s parents, Shaw goes underground as Carter Skye, enrolling in the Process™ developed by Osiris founder and director Master Eli, ne David Ellis. He quickly finds himself mired in an isolated cult in which paramilitary bodyguards support a leader who has every flaw you’d expect from his role. The thrills that follow are authentic, but the attempt to weave this plot together with Shaw’s continuing quest for the truth about his survivalist father’s last months is surprisingly awkward, and the use of four separate scenes in which characters you thought were dead spring back to life suggests that the boundlessly inventive Deaver may be running low on new tricks.
Not the best Deaver to offer friends you are hoping to get as firmly hooked as you are.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53597-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 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.
