A cunningly constructed yet flimsy novel of youthful confusion, obsession, and murder.
In a serpentine narrative that reads like a podcast, the friends, parents, and twin sister of a 19-year-old college student recall the events leading up to her disappearance as well as the criminal investigation and personal travails that followed.
Almost every character in this so-called “true crime story" set in Manchester, England, in 2011 has something to hide. That includes the author, who, using his real name, casts himself as one of the more dubious actors on a crowded stage that is in fact a hall of mirrors. The setup, however, is straightforward and all too familiar. At the tail end of a drunken Christmas party, a pretty and talented college student disappears and is never seen again. “She never got the chance to let her childhood and her pretensions fall away,” the vanished Zoe’s pretentious boyfriend, Andrew, later muses. “And you could argue that’s useful for the role that she’s been cast in by the likes of her father....A victim is apparently the best thing you can be in this day and age.” Andrew is one of a handful of central characters interviewed by Evelyn Mitchell, a journalist who becomes obsessed with the case (and who is murdered, perhaps as a consequence or perhaps not). It is Evelyn’s transcript of those interviews—interrupted by emails between Evelyn and the author—that reveals both the truth behind Zoe’s disappearance and the deceits and dangers that shadow these young lives. “It’s amazing what can seem normal when it’s all you know,” one character remarks of his unstable Irish mother. “I spent my first five years dressed as the girl she’s actually been expecting, which was confusing to say the least.” This is Fintan, of whom the reader will learn more and worse. Each voice is distinctive and convincing, and each story within the central tale captures the youth culture of the time in unglamorous Manchester. There is, however, more style than substance in a crime novel that, for all its cleverness, resorts to red herrings that would make Agatha Christie blush.
A cunningly constructed yet flimsy novel of youthful confusion, obsession, and murder.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72824-586-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
