A crisp caper whose detailed setting is its biggest attraction.
An intricate plan in a far-off city to snatch some priceless gems. What could possibly go wrong?
Doquang opens her twisty cat-and-mouse thriller with a “Day 7” cliffhanger featuring resourceful heroine Rune Sarasin tied to a chair somewhere in Upper Manhattan and facing imminent death. Then the story rolls back to Day 1, with Rune and worrywart boyfriend Kit ensconced in Bangkok’s elegant Mandarin Oriental Hotel as they prepare to steal the title jewels from American gemstone trafficker Charles Lemaire. Except for a brief car chase, the heist comes off without a hitch. But the duo’s planned getaway aboard a ferry is abruptly aborted with the news that Kit’s teenage sister, Madee, is missing. Abandoning their best-laid plan, Rune and Kit search the city with the murderous Lemaire in hot pursuit. Doquang’s familiarity with Bangkok’s “glorious views and the nascent hum of urban life” is on full display; her portrait of this unique city, from glitter to gutters, is her novel’s main appeal. Given the flash-forward prologue, it’s no spoiler to disclose that Rune gets back to New York for some tense interaction at Sotheby’s celebrated auction gallery before her capture. Doquang writes gracefully about sunrises and suites and crowded streets, but her tame and often elegant prose is not well suited to her propulsive plot, which offers a potentially nail-biting encounter or a violent twist in nearly every chapter. And it’s certainly questionable whether the reader will be drawn to the abrasive and self-involved Rune.
A crisp caper whose detailed setting is its biggest attraction.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781613165218
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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