A brisk and edgy tale of a young man struggling to do what’s right.
A petty criminal in 1970s New York City gets mixed up with an increasingly dangerous organization in this series-starting thriller.
Jake Barnum has spent most of his first 24 years in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood making trouble, mostly with minor thefts or nights that landed him in the drunk tank. At a Halloween party in 1978, he falls for Marilyn Monroe—or, rather, a woman wearing a mask that resembles the Hollywood star. This is her persona as part of the Desire Card, and she ropes Jake into the group, as well. The Card members, who all wear masks that look like celebrities, abide by a simple slogan: “Any wish fulfilled… for the right price.” Jake quickly learns that club activities aren’t very different from those in his criminal life, as they entail threatening people and dealing drugs. Things get more complicated for Jake when it turns out that his elderly, thuggish boss is the Card’s targeted rival. He finds it hard to trust anyone; some of the wishes that the Card fulfills involve murder, and someone in the organization is plotting a coup. Still, Jake is smitten with Marilyn, so if he wants to escape, he’ll need to find a way that they can both be safe. Goldberg, the author of Vanish Me (2022), offers a gritty, suspenseful story in this novel. Although the Card is a straightforwardly criminal organization, its members are mysterious and unnerving. They’re almost always masked, wearing a “frozen expression” that makes them even more dubious. Despite his flaws and wavering morals, Jake will garner readers’ sympathy; his ill brother, who relies on full-time care, needs surgery, and Jake fights to keep him and his best friend from harm. The author’s concise prose gives momentum to the narrative, which carries over into 1980. Copious pop-culture and historical references effectively ground the time period, from a beloved 1978 cinematic musical to news of the Iran hostage crisis. A doozy of an ending lays out a fairly clear path to the next series installment.
A brisk and edgy tale of a young man struggling to do what’s right.Pub Date: June 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68549-085-0
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Rough Edges Press
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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