Cleveland engenders deep paranoia for the susceptibility of U.S. intelligence—under the guise of entertainment.
“How well do any of us know our neighbors?” This question anchors Cleveland’s latest novel as a CIA analyst fights against the clock to keep Iranian intelligence from infiltrating the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.
Beth Bradford’s life is in transition: Her youngest son has just started college, and she and her husband are moving out of the house where all three of their kids grew up, away from the McLean, Virginia, neighborhood where their best friends still live. Their marriage is also fading; Beth’s only solace is that she will have more time to devote to preventing Iranian intelligence from infiltrating the network using an asset only known as “The Neighbor.” Despite her almost 20 years on the case, however, she is suddenly reassigned to a teaching gig, losing her high-level security clearance and her professional raison d’être. The last bit of intelligence she (surreptitiously) accesses is a short message: “The Neighbor has found a new cul-de-sac.” Determined to figure out the identity of The Neighbor before national security is compromised, she begins to surveill her old neighborhood, noticing for the first time how most of her friends, in addition to the woman who bought her house, have their own secrets and could potentially be guilty. But no one will believe her; her family, friends, and co-workers chalk up her suspicions to midlife crisis paranoia. Will she uncover the identity of The Neighbor before it’s too late? Despite a rather predictable pattern—no one seems to understand that Beth’s concern is rooted in more than her chaotic life changes—there are a number of satisfying twists in the second half of the book. To answer the rhetorical question: No, it’s clear that we never really know our neighbors—or our own families—but must rely only on ourselves. A stark takeaway, yes, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Cleveland engenders deep paranoia for the susceptibility of U.S. intelligence—under the guise of entertainment.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35802-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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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