An often crafty whodunit laced with traditional elements of mystery and suspense.
A hard-driving assistant district attorney’s unflinching dedication to the law threatens the safety of her beloved daughter in Smith’s legal thriller.
Milwaukee assistant DA Rachel Elizabeth Matthews is the kind of tough-as-nails prosecutor who easily withstands the murderous threats from the punks she’s convicted as they're hauled off to jail. As Rachel proudly observes, she’s “immune” to that sort of thing. That immunity, however, comes at a price: Putting the law ahead of everything else in her life following the death of her daughter Charley’s father has slowly driven a wedge between Rachel and the struggling teen. Even Rachel’s widower father—the man who inspired her to follow him into the law—warns her that cold statutes are poor substitutes for warm human companionship. Beautiful blond socialite Olivia “Liv” Reid befriends Rachel at a gala event and asks to join her book club; Rachel obliges readily enough, largely due to her immediate desire to stick it to Liv’s overbearing and abusive husband, Zach. Rachel soon has more than Zach’s creepy come-ons and threatening overtures to manage: A stalker suddenly pops up in her life, seemingly determined to make her existence a living hell. But why? And who exactly is this stalker? The one thing she does know is that acting like “a rabbit on the run” is “no way to live.” Rachel decides to stop letting her stalker call the shots and instead “go after him for a change, maybe even set a trap.” But the no-nonsense ADA hasn’t always lived according to the letter of the law—Rachel’s got a skeleton in her closet that she’s desperate to keep hidden. Smith’s carefully unfolding exploration of the protagonist’s intricate psyche deftly parallels the rising action as ADA Matthews moves ever closer to unmasking the stalker’s true identity, while her taut, economical prose leaves plenty of room for the revelations to flow freely.
An often crafty whodunit laced with traditional elements of mystery and suspense.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Puzzle Box Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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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