Poignant and engrossing, with small and large surprises leading to the final reveal.
A multilayered psychological thriller set in the fictional small coastal town of Misty Pines, Oregon, where a 14-year-old girl is abducted.
Sheriff Jax Turner is a broken man. Five years earlier, his 4-year-old daughter, Lulu, died from cancer, and Jax’s inability to move through his grief finally led his wife, Abby, to divorce him. We meet the sheriff as he drives to the shoreline and places his gun in his mouth. He hesitates just long enough with his finger on the trigger to receive a call from headquarters: Allison Krueger is missing. One more case. One more chance to redeem himself after the failure a quarter century ago in Portland to save Madeline Massey, who was taken along with her younger sister, Elena. Although Elena escaped, Madeline was found too late. It’s the cold case that has always haunted him and his former partner and was one of the reasons he and Abby moved to the quietude of Misty Pines. Now, with his chief deputy on an Alaskan fishing trip, Jax must depend on a trio of newbies to begin the investigation. Allison’s mother, Emily, has been raising the teenager on her own ever since her husband, Daniel, left them to marry psychotherapist Elena Massey—the same Elena who’d been abducted 25 years ago. Keliikoa’s brooding mystery gradually fills with eclectic clues that link the two cases, signaling the possible return of a psychopath bent on taunting Jax and Elena, two characters whose own emotional stability is already compromised. Jax’s debilitating angst and self-doubt are viscerally portrayed, especially via his compulsive efforts to finish the dollhouse he had been building for his daughter. But his overwhelming anxiety nearly overpowers the thrill of the narrative. Fortunately, he slowly regains his professional footing, and Keliikoa builds the tension steadily as time runs out and Jax must sort through a combination of solid leads, twisty secrets, and several red herrings.
Poignant and engrossing, with small and large surprises leading to the final reveal.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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