A welcome debut that’s both a fleet thriller and a pathology of sisterhood at its most harrowing.
A spin instructor who can’t believe that her sister killed herself looks into the circumstances of her death and unearths a shocking series of secrets that go back to their childhood.
Willa Stannard was a news anchor on KZTV in Chicago until a panic attack ended her career in the middle of a broadcast. When she’s found in her bathtub, her wrists slit and a cryptic note to her sister nearby, all the evidence points to suicide. But Sawyer Stannard can’t believe that the sister she’d grown away from years ago would end her own life. Despite a distinct lack of encouragement from Officer Mallory Curry, she fastens on a true-crime story Willa had pseudonymously immersed herself in for TruthShout, a local newspaper: the kidnapping 26 years ago of 18-month-old Melody Wynne from her parents’ home in rural Michigan. Corbin Campbell, the Trowbridge County deputy who took the lead on the case, never found enough evidence to arrest either Abel Bowen, a neighbor of the Wynnes’ with a criminal past, or self-anointed psychic Merrill Vaughn, who inserted himself into the investigation repeatedly until he died. Why was Willa so obsessed with the ancient case that she not only covered it for TruthShout, but prepared a book-length manuscript, Cry of the Cicadas: The True Story of Melody Wynne’s Disappearance, for literary agent Gemma Matthews? And why does Gemma, who’s supported the project enthusiastically, suddenly have cold feet about submitting it for publication without more solid evidence supporting its conclusions? Producing that evidence will exact a fearsome cost on Sawyer, with anxious readers half a step behind her.
A welcome debut that’s both a fleet thriller and a pathology of sisterhood at its most harrowing.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781639103478
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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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