A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.
In this thriller, a wealthy American businessman suspected of murder goes on the run with contract killers at his heels.
Joe Savage is one of the richest men in the United States. As CEO of Omnicon Investments, he lives and works in New York City, with homes in various states and a chateau on the French Riviera. Best of all, he and his beautiful wife, Betty, live a happy life with their 4-year-old son, Mark. But this all comes crashing down one day when Joe awakens in a strange apartment with a body in the bedroom. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. Convinced the police won’t buy that, Joe flees the crime scene. New York City Police Department detective Thomas Bone takes the murder case, with plenty of evidence pointing to a certain CEO. It must be a frame-up, but Joe has nowhere to turn for help. Betty and Mark are his only family, and she and Joe’s friend Peter Turnbull, Omnicon’s finance director, insist the entrepreneur turn himself in and take a guilty plea. Joe refuses to cop to something he didn’t do and instead sets out to prove his innocence. As Bone and New York’s finest comb the city, Joe keeps his head down, trying on disguises and even a new identity. But the authorities aren’t the only ones after him. For some reason, professional killers are gunning for him as well, and they tend to shoot first with nary a warning. Joe fights to stay alive and out of handcuffs long enough to clear his name.
Obomeghie’s novel brims with suspense. Though readers know right away who’s responsible for the murder and the motive, the narrative rolls out surprises, including startling deaths and specifics about the hit men. There’s plenty of action, too. Joe gets involved in foot and car chases, most of the time with assassins packing guns and lots of bullets. The author layers the story with painstaking details about Joe’s opulent lifestyle, a glaring contrast to the protagonist’s grim existence on the streets. He trades in his $3,000 Armani suit for a pair of sneakers, and his stay at a cheap hotel with “dusty, papered walls done in floral patterns” is worlds away from his New York home with million-dollar artworks adorning the walls. Joe will surely earn readers’ sympathy, as he suffers from depression and recurring nightmares from his yearlong captivity in a Viet Cong prison in Vietnam. And Joe’s nemesis Bone, though a smart and capable detective, isn’t the easiest guy to like, too often resorting to bloodshed. Despite all the gunfire, the author keeps the story’s violent scenes in check, even spotlighting the unexpected fallout. For example, readers may cheer when Joe successfully evades armed men, but innocent bystanders aren’t so lucky. Most descriptions, meanwhile, sound like snazzy one-liners, from on-the-lam Joe’s “walking around New York with a face he couldn’t afford” to a cigarette-smoking cop’s “presently ignoring the Surgeon General’s warning.” The story culminates in a gratifying denouement chock-full of resolution.
A superlative hero headlines this razor-sharp crime tale.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9913830-1-6
Page Count: 492
Publisher: Elliott and Dylan Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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