A thrilling and unpredictable hunt for answers that pays off.
A recently separated Brooklyn mother loses her one new friend and chases the woman down for answers.
As the book opens, Mary, who’s recently left her controlling husband, makes a new friend at the playground. Alex, Mary’s 2-year-old son, whines that he’s hungry, and the beautiful young mother sitting next to them on the bench offers up a bag of potato chips. This is Willa, and at this vulnerable moment in Mary’s life, she’s thrilled to connect with someone so attentive and engaging. After leaving her husband and the wealthy milieu that came along with him, Mary has been struggling to build a new life. Her relationship with fun, irreverent Willa is the one bright spot in her drearier new existence. Willa invites Mary to the opera, arranges play dates with their little boys, and fills in the gaps left by Mary’s now-estranged in-laws. Mary begins to rely heavily on Willa and maybe even love her, which is why, when Willa suddenly and inexplicably ghosts Mary, it’s so devastating. With nothing left for her in Brooklyn, Mary moves upstate with Alex, eager to start over. It’s a shock when she bumps into someone near her new home who looks exactly like Willa, but the woman insists her name is Annie. As the story unfolds, Mary learns information about Willa that she could never have imagined. This is a fast-paced, plot-driven novel that manages to poke fun at millennial parenting and the culture of wealthy Brooklynites. Although the number of coincidences and outlandish opportunities for scheming may stretch credibility, Konen does an admirable job of building suspense and keeping readers guessing. The story is perhaps tied up a bit too neatly at the end, but most readers will find themselves sufficiently surprised by the ultimate reveal.
A thrilling and unpredictable hunt for answers that pays off.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593544723
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.
A descendant of enslaved people fights a Florida developer over the future of a small island.
In 1760, the slave ship Venus breaks apart in a storm on its way to Savannah, and only a few survivors, all Africans, find their way safely to a tiny barrier island between Florida and Georgia. For two centuries, only formerly enslaved people and their descendants live there. A curse on white people hangs over the island, and none who ever set foot on it survive. Its last resident was Lovely Jackson, who departed as a teen in 1955. Today—well, in 2020—a developer called Tidal Breeze wants Florida’s permission to “develop” Dark Isle, which sits within bridge-building distance from the well-established Camino Island. The plot is an easy setup for Grisham, big people vs. little people. Lovely’s revered ancestors are buried on Dark Isle, which Hurricane Leo devastated from end to end. Lovely claims the islet’s ownership despite not having formal title, and she wants white folks to leave the place alone. But apparently Florida doesn’t have enough casinos and golf courses to suit some people. Surely developers can buy off that little old Black lady with a half million bucks. No? How about a million? “I wish they’d stop offering money,” Lovely complains. “I ain’t for sale.” Thus a non-jury court trial begins to establish ownership. The story has no legal fireworks, just ordinary maneuvering. The real fun is in the backstory, in the portrayal of the aptly named Lovely, and the skittishness of white people to step on the island as long as the ancient curse remains. Lovely has self-published a history of the island, and a sympathetic white woman named Mercer Mann decides to write a nonfiction account as well. When that book ultimately comes out, reviewers for Kirkus (and others) “raved on and on.” Don’t expect stunning twists, though early on Dark Isle gives four white guys a stark message. The tension ends with the judge’s verdict, but the remaining 30 pages bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780385545990
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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