A first-rate addition to the subgenre of Threatened Men Acting Stupidly.
An 11th-grade teacher declared a national hero for saving his Connecticut school from an armed invader is knocked down several pegs by an unexpected lawsuit and a blackmail scheme.
The instructor, Richard Boyle, successfully talks a former student in a dynamite vest out of carrying out his planned grudge killings only to see him trip over a shoelace as he turns to go and blow himself up. The attacker’s parents sue Richard, charging he didn’t do enough to save their son. Richard is not on the greatest terms with parents, who are already unhappy with him for teaching their kids about cannibalism via Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. But this turns out to be the least of Richard’s worries after another one-time student, a misfit drug dealer looking to capitalize on Richard’s celebrity, demands $10,000 not to tell everyone that the teacher fondled him as coach of the wrestling team. Richard’s desperate efforts to avoid the false charge only draw him in deeper, eventually linking him to a murder and threatening his marriage. “I think the only thing we can accuse Richard of is being an idiot,” says his sister-in-law, a police officer. Though the book has one glaring red herring and one saw-that-coming plot twist, Barclay makes up for those missteps with his perfectly pitched treatment of topical subjects including school violence, book censorship, and the gun violence epidemic. When the drug dealer’s girlfriend asks him where he got his gun, “He rolled his eyes. ‘Lucy, this is America.’” It’s not clear why Richard’s narration is in the first person and everyone else’s is in the third. But Barclay, one of crime fiction’s most reliable stars, makes that approach, and much more in this page-turner, work.
A first-rate addition to the subgenre of Threatened Men Acting Stupidly.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780063276314
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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