A thoroughly enjoyable—if sometimes bumpy—ride with a philosophical outlaw trucker.
A street-smart, spiritually oriented trucker hauls much more than freight in Arnold’s action thriller.
“Relax, Mister Smith,” truck driver Buddy Green says to his new passenger and client. “It’s smooth sailing here on the Shakey Town Express.” In addition to hauling goods up and down California’s I-5 corridor, Buddy runs a successful side business helping all kinds of fugitives (like Mister Smith) slip past the law. There are just a few rules everyone has to abide by: no smoking, no guns in the front seat, no music other than country, and no taking the Lord’s name in vain. (Buddy explains that he has “disabused” himself of a strict moral code after serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he remains a devout Christian.) Smith begrudgingly agrees to Buddy’s rules, and the two find themselves locked in endless debates about God, war, and everything in between. (The Great Gatsby even becomes a hot topic when Smith discovers that Buddy enjoys hosting a trucker book club with no-nonsense former MMA fighter Large Marge, one of the book’s best characters.) What Buddy doesn’t know yet is that Smith isn’t just on the run for fraud—he’s a member of a gang that just pulled off a deadly heist. Danger lies in wait for them at Smith’s destination of Los Angeles, where a young sex worker named Dylan, who has crossed the wrong Hollywood mogul, is also waiting and putting all her hopes on Buddy. Arnold introduces readers to this gruff but fascinating world with fantastic cinematic energy, snappy dialogue, and well-calibrated suspense. Buddy is an instantly likable character whom readers will be happy to ride along with. The treatment of Smith (and, as a consequence, the overall story) is more uneven. Pages fly by when Smith and Buddy settle into a Midnight Run-like action-comedy groove, evading the police and learning about each other. But a sudden burst of unexpected, gratuitous violence awkwardly shifts the story’s stakes and tone. (The second half, dedicated to Dylan, has a great set-up and some touching moments but feels like an entirely different novel.) Arnold assembles some inventive set pieces and memorable characters here, but they don’t quite make a cohesive whole.
A thoroughly enjoyable—if sometimes bumpy—ride with a philosophical outlaw trucker.Pub Date: May 27, 2024
ISBN: 9798326853196
Page Count: 466
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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