Faith-based speculative fiction fans should enjoy this tale of an angel vigilante’s glorious journey.
This debut novel—and series opener—is a blend of Christian mythology, crime drama, and arcane thriller that follows two detectives as they attempt to track down a seemingly unstoppable killer.
Ian Jelani and his partner, Lane Madigan, are Miami police detectives tasked with finding a murderer who has been ritualistically butchering criminals—drug dealers, porn peddlers, terrorists. As the two investigate the elusive executioner, they discover similar homicides across the country. The “Holy Terror,” as the media have dubbed the killer, only targets hardcore criminals. Unbeknown to the two detectives, the entity behind the gruesome murders is an angel named Thumos, Yahweh’s right hand of justice whose flaming sword of vengeance has dispatched those who do evil against Yahweh’s children for millennia. But the recent killings have not been ordained by God—and Thumos is in danger of losing his soul to darkness. As Thumos struggles with his own spiritual demons, so do Jelani and Madigan, both dealing with their own issues with accepting God’s will. Fueled by Christian beliefs—relevant biblical verses and Christian doctrine abound—this tale about the spiritual awakenings of all three characters is powerfully moving. (Christian readers will also undoubtedly enjoy the pop-culture references, like the Christian metal band Stryper.) The pacing is brisk, and Dougherty’s narrative reads like a thriller, high intensity throughout with action-packed scenes from beginning to end. The big criticism here is the wild inconsistency in descriptions of both the setting and characters. Thumos, for example, is richly portrayed: He “shook his head, and his once long, flowing white hair floated away as multiple horns began to now appear out of his head. His once human-like ears stretched into elongated leathery appendages. His mouth expanded outward, creating almost a snout, with long, white fangs.” Satan, on the other hand, is barely described at all, with the devil wearing a black robe and having “grotesque fingers” and “grotesque appendages.”
Faith-based speculative fiction fans should enjoy this tale of an angel vigilante’s glorious journey.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2022
ISBN: 9781667861081
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Book Baby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 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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