A suspense tale with an engrossing plot and fun characters.
In Brote’s thriller set in 1978, a pair of newlyweds move into a home that has more secrets than they bargained for.
As the story opens, Sharon Walsh is driving to Nettlestone, New Hampshire, to move into her new home with her husband, Kip, a local morning radio DJ. When Sharon arrives at the house, she learns that it’s next door to an abandoned Cloud 9 Family Fun Park. As Sharon gets accustomed to Nettlestone, she finds some secret compartments in her home as well as a cache of provocative photos and a diary; she also discovers the house’s previous residents were a woman named Astrid and her husband, Hank Russo, who allegedly strangled her a year ago but was never charged.In addition, she finds out that her icy neighbor, Dolores, used to live there. Despite being plagued by nightmares, Sharon investigates the mysteries surrounding Astrid’s murder, which seem connected to a secret swingers’ club. Later, she meets Astrid’s twin sister, Agnes; together, the two women decode the murder victim’s collection of postcards and uncover a hidden tunnel that leads directly from the house to Cloud 9. After someone else turns up dead, Sharon races to solve the mystery with new urgency. Brote’s tale is a riveting whodunit that has the added bonus of being a period piece, complete with a music playlist. The plot offers thrilling (and sometimes delightfully blue) twists and turns, and Brote manages to give her setting additional texture with 1970s references that feels as comfortable as a faded Eagles T-shirt. This provides a wonderful contrast to the skillfully described, creepy amusement park, which features a labyrinthine house of mirrors. Still, Brote effectively takes a beat every now and again to focus on Sharon and Kip’s relationship, allowing readers to become more invested in the characters. Similarly, the prose can be striking, as in the prologue: “I was able to inhale one shaky last breath, the intoxicating fragrance of rose and jasmine on my skin mingling with the stink of stale cigarette smoke and the marshy pond outside.”
A suspense tale with an engrossing plot and fun characters.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9798987693315
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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