Well-drawn characters and a dynamic situation but in the end, just a bit too much.
The seventh Dave Gurney thriller opens with a lesson on the unreliability of eyewitnesses and then takes up a series of lurid crimes committed in a village where nothing is what it seems.
Super-detective Gurney, retired from the NYPD, is still periodically drawn into especially difficult investigations, which is why his former partner Mike Morgan has called. Morgan's departure from the NYPD was not as unblemished as Gurney's, but he has landed well and is now chief of police in Larchfield, home to a number of wealthy individuals and mostly the creation of the Russell family. When Angus Russell, the current patriarch, is murdered in his own mansion, there is considerable uproar, and Morgan asks Gurney to help manage the investigation and divert a little of the world's attention from himself. The crime-scene evidence points directly at Billy Tate, a man who had strong motives for murdering Russell but who was, frustratingly, already dead, the victim of a lightning strike the day before Russell was killed. From this puzzling but admittedly gripping beginning, the investigation uncovers progressively more baroque variations on the theme of deceptive appearances. First, it's established that Tate might have survived the lightning bolt and the subsequent fall from the church steeple, because he was a tough guy and, well, who knows about lightning? More bodies pile up, and the emergence of several characters who also might have wanted Russell dead suggests that Tate may have had help. Morgan, while not actually obstructing the investigation, seems to have reasons to want the case closed quickly. At each turn, Gurney helps to classify, consider, and clarify evidence and the theories the evidence gives rise to, but he, too, is somewhat misled. The residents of Larchfield are an admirably unlovable bunch, seething with resentments and snubbed privilege, and Gurney and his wife are pleasantly down-to-earth, but overall the plot mechanics reach too far beyond the merely astonishing.
Well-drawn characters and a dynamic situation but in the end, just a bit too much.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64009-310-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
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
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