Ninety percent of a smart, twisty thriller, but the finale just doesn’t work.
What do you do when you find out that the mentor supposedly advancing your career is actually sabotaging it?
Oxford graduate student Tessa Templeton, just about to receive her doctorate, is stunned when an anonymous email warns, “You may want to reconsider asking Christopher Eccles for a recommendation letter in the future.” Attached is a photo of a dismissive letter that has torpedoed her chances of a tenure-track university job despite her outstanding grades and a brilliant dissertation on Apollo and Daphne being considered for publication. Tessa thinks of Chris as a friend as well as her dissertation adviser; he rescued her from the University of Florida and a family of doctors who thought studying classical Latin literature was a ridiculous waste of time. True, she’s been a little uneasy about how personal their relationship is, especially now that he’s separated from his wife and her boyfriend has dumped her because she’s too wrapped up in her work. Now she fears that Chris is scheming to keep her at Oxford in a low-pay, no-future lectureship so she’ll remain under his thumb—which is exactly the case, we learn as the point of view shifts occasionally to Chris in this deftly plotted debut. There’s intrigue and deception enough for a spy novel as Tessa takes off for an archaeological dig in Italy to pursue traces of Marius, an obscure second-century Latin poet whose unusual use of choliambic meter has attracted her interest, repeatedly discouraged by her adviser. Meanwhile, creepy Chris has hacked her email and is busily plotting to further damage her prospects. Events come to a satisfying climax at an Oxford conference at which Chris and Tessa deliver dueling papers, but then the author tacks on a bizarre, gothic denouement that nothing in the development of his two main characters has prepared for. The novel’s subdued but pronounced feminist undertones suddenly morph into distasteful and implausible revenge porn that leaves a nasty aftertaste as the plot is hastily wrapped up.
Ninety percent of a smart, twisty thriller, but the finale just doesn’t work.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-393-54127-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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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