Hardcore action here. Greaney and the Gray Man are on their game.
The Gray Man dodges death and whups the bad guys for the 12th time in this nonstop thriller.
A banker steals records from his Swiss employer, hoping to expose corruption. He stores the information on a burner phone, and everybody wants it—not least the Russians and the CIA. Court Gentry, the man of many monikers—the Gray Man, Violator, and Six—is pulled off his job of blowing up “oligarchs’ big toys,” i.e., their mega-yachts, to help find the phone. He’s ex–CIA, and now he’s a freelancer, “only taking contracts he thought to be principled.” There’s excitement even before the main plotline as limpets spread shock waves under the sea. Meanwhile, he pines for his erstwhile lover Zoya Zakharova, the ex–SVR agent who’d once tried to kill him until their hormones kicked in. Now she feels adrift, her only companions being bottles of vodka and lines of cocaine. And wouldn't you know, a phone call pulls her from her stupor. If you’re not too damn drunk, a voice tells her, we need you to find a phone with stolen banking information before anyone else gets their hands on it. Paraphrasing Casablanca: Of all the plotlines in all the thrillers in all the world, Zoya walks into Violator’s. But the two assassins meet under the most incommodious of circumstances. Hmm. Do they kiss or kill? Hint: This isn't a romance novel. Readers will have great fun as Gentry manages to survive, sometimes in implausible ways. You'll think he is done for on a Swiss train until you see there are 200 pages to go and remember that he's the series hero. So no spoilers there. But that train ride provides the story’s most riveting action until the blazing finale. Series fans already know that the CIA, specifically Suzanne Brewer, has a kill order out for Gentry. Brewer has always been a scheming antagonist, but now she truly reveals the darkness of her character. Not much is predictable but for the actions of CIA agent Angela Lacy, who has never shot anyone before and is loath to do so now. Alert readers will be thinking, Come on Angela! You can do it!
Hardcore action here. Greaney and the Gray Man are on their game.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-54810-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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