A spy tale that works best as a character study of grief.
A troubled doctor becomes embroiled in a terrorist conspiracy in Purpura’s debut thriller.
In 2024, Vince DeLuca is a skilled obstetric surgeon in Santa Barbara, California, but he’s a depressed, alcoholic, and solitary person in his personal life. When his patient Jackie Carter needs emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, she confesses, in her fentanyl stupor, that her pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair with a man named Salaam. Vince also finds out that she and her lover are part of a plan to acquire missiles to attack the United States as revenge for the Iraq War. The doctor, who lost his betrothed, Helen, in the 9/11 terror attacks, feels compelled to act, and he brings this information to the FBI. Soon, Special Agent Carolyn Talbot arrives to work with Vince to uncover more information on Jackie and her role in the conspiracy, and an instant attraction sparks between her and the surgeon. Later, Vince finds himself the target of jihadis, and further secrets are revealed as he willingly becomes an informant for both the FBI and CIA. As he helps uncover connections to Jackie’s husband, a military contractor named Brent, he narrowly escapes death himself. Purpura, who’s an obstetrician and gynecologist, has created a sympathetic narrator in Vince, whose dour, piteous characterization believably motivates several rash decisions even as his work as a physician remains pristine. The book’s plot loses its momentum at times as it tries to balance Vince’s personal life with the somewhat far-fetched terrorism plot. Also, although Jackie is important early on, she remains out of the picture for most of the book, as the middle third focuses more on Carolyn and Vince’s relationship. The way that Purpura draws on his medical knowledge in compelling ways and his writing about Vince’s grieving process can be poignant, as when the protagonist wrestles with a new relationship: “I want to watch her think, hear her sarcasm, her innuendos, her confidence—I want all of her. Next to me. Woven inside me.”
A spy tale that works best as a character study of grief.Pub Date: April 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798886450132
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
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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