A familiar tale made fresh by deft plotting and well-planted twists.
Two forensic investigators are called on to do a long-distance welfare check on the 19-year-old daughter of a rock star.
Billy Diamond has always been too occupied with his band, Chimera, to spare much attention for his daughter, Devon. But when she and her boyfriend, Carlos, take time off from their studies at Yale to enroll in Today’s Enlightenment, a retreat in rural Nevada, Billy’s concerned. The usually conscientious Devon drops off Billy’s radar, not calling her dad or answering his texts. His concern deepens when he learns that Carlos’ body has been found in the Truckee River, and he summons Rachael Davies of the Locard Institute—“a center for forensic research, training, and investigation”—to his mansion outside D.C., hoping she can make contact with Devon and assure him that his daughter’s all right. Too busy raising her late sister’s toddler son to travel to Reno herself, Rachael asks her younger colleague, Ellie Carr, to take a look. Once she arrives at Today’s Enlightenment, Ellie sees that Devon is far from all right. Galen, who like many charismatic leaders has no last name, seems determined to isolate his followers from their friends and families, leaving them dependent on him alone. Black paces her story carefully, revealing the true menace Devon faces gradually as she keeps readers wondering how far Galen will go. There are many surprises on the way to the big reveal. The backstory of Rachael and her late sister, Isis, packs plenty of punch, as does Ellie’s brave fight to survive the peril her investigation puts her in.
A familiar tale made fresh by deft plotting and well-planted twists.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9781496749680
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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