A rich, dark mystery set in repressed 19th-century London.
A series of grisly murders disrupts Victorian London’s covert gay scene in Brennan’s historical thriller.
In 1888, the city of London is abuzz over the sensational murders of Jack the Ripper in the East End, but over on the West End—in a neighborhood known as “Clubland” for its concentration of gentleman’s clubs—another murderer is at work. The most infamous of the clubs is Sizar’s, a place where boys from poor backgrounds can rise in the world so long as they’re willing to “bend.” Former Navy man Stewart Marsh sorts boys for Sizar’s; when he can, he sneaks down to Brighton to go for a run on the beach. It is here, beneath a pier, that he finds an unwelcome sight: “Snagged in the pooled crevice where sand had been drawn away by the tide lay a young man. He felt able to adjudicate the mound’s youthfulness by the roundness of boyish bulk, having refereed many a wrestling match in the scouting for Sizar’s.” The body belongs to an infamous pimp and blackmailer known as the Pipe, a young man who many might have wished dead. But who actually did the deed? As Scotland Yard Detective Oscar Glass gets to the bottom of the crime, bodies continue to pile up, and the evidence seems to point right to the heart of Sizar’s itself. Brennan has constructed an immersive puzzle, one that delights in shattering Victorian facades of class and propriety with sex and blood. Unfortunately, the author’s baroque prose weighs the story down like an anchor: “White and soft was the fall from London Bridge into the Thames,” opens one chapter; “Painless and warm, too. Death was, truly, as the evangelical preachers promised it to be: a sweet relief. Instead of the mucky freeze of the black Thames at midnight, impact was straight into the clouds.” Those who can weather the mannered prose will be treated to a fascinating look into the strange, lost world gentleman’s clubs and the young men ensnared in their customs.
A rich, dark mystery set in repressed 19th-century London.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780645555332
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Hard Crossing Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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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