An action-packed but uneven thriller.
A lawyer rescues a victim in distress and gets drawn into the hunt for a serial rapist in this crime novel.
Attorney Jessie Martin pulls over to the side of the road while driving in Poughkeepsie, New York, when she spies a woman lying unconscious in the pouring rain. The woman, Lissie Sexton, survives—she’s a sex worker who was mercilessly beaten by a client she cannot adequately identify. Police detective Ebony Jones—a direct, “just the facts, ma’am” type of investigator—comes to believe that Lissie suffered at the hands of a dangerous serial rapist as similar victims are discovered. Unfortunately, Lissie disappears, and it turns out that she’s represented by Jeremy Kaplan, a shady lawyer, who insists on keeping her whereabouts unknown. Jessie has a tortured history with Jeremy, a despicable man who once tried to destroy her career. Yet she is now offered a job by him. A distraught Jessie mulls her thorny predicament: “Was she really considering crossing over to the dark side? To Jeremy Kaplan? The man who’d almost had her disbarred, who’d cost her the partnership at Curtis and McMann, her engagement to Kyle, and who’d threatened her life and Lily’s? Was she out of her freaking mind?” She ends up accepting the position against her better judgment. Now, Jones leans on Jessie to disclose Lissie’s whereabouts. But Jessie refuses, a decision that only increases the already existing tensions between her and Jones, her former best friend.
In this ambitious sequel, Millman certainly doesn’t skimp on the action—every page seems to reveal a new drama or explain an old one, and the tale’s pace never lags. The main plot is intelligently structured and entirely plausible. While it offers nothing literarily original, the story provides a thoughtful portrayal of the tension between the demands of defense attorneys and the needs of law enforcement. But the tale is written in such a hyperventilated style that it sometimes seems more comic than tragic. The backstory is so complex that it quickly becomes a burden—the book begins with an unwieldy freight of dramas that are difficult to unravel. Jessie is stalked by a psychotic killer; is in a state of perpetual struggle with her ex-fiance; and flounders in her current relationship with Hal Samuels, a district attorney, who has his own set of problems, both professional and personal. As the subplots multiply, the tale becomes increasingly overwrought. But the principal bar to readers’ enjoyment of what could be an entertaining crime drama is the author’s writing, which swings from melodramatic to bland. Consider this internal monologue by Jones: “This is why I became a public servant, she thought. Solving crimes and catching scumbags are cool, but saving a life’s the best.”
An action-packed but uneven thriller.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68512-082-5
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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