The heroine’s personal problems provide a fascinating counterpoint to a disturbing tale of murder and madness.
A desperate hunt for what may be a gang of serial killers flushes out a policewoman’s haunting past in Finnish author Seeck’s first English translation.
The body of a famous author’s wife is discovered in what appears to be a deliberately staged pose, dressed in a black gown with black painted nails and a ghastly grin. Another almost identical woman is found under the ice of a nearby lake. The author, Roger Koponen, is out of town at a book signing, where an audience member asks some odd questions. While a police officer is driving him back to Helsinki, communications are lost, and two bodies are soon found burned in the woods. The police realize that the deaths are re-created scenes from Koponen’s popular Witch Hunt trilogy and fear that more may follow. Sgt. Jessica Niemi’s dying boss, Erne Mikson, the only person on the Helsinki police force who knows she’s a very wealthy woman, puts her in charge of the case. Mikson, long Jessica’s father figure, knows her disturbingly dysfunctional background, which is slowly revealed as she’s personally drawn into the mystifying case by her striking resemblance to several of the victims. Jessica’s team works tirelessly to uncover suspects and motives as more gruesome murders related to witches occur until Mikson fears that Jessica herself may be a target. The apparent resurrection of Koponen’s cellphone and his image caught on surveillance cameras only make the case more confusing for the officers, who have very different thoughts about who’s involved.
The heroine’s personal problems provide a fascinating counterpoint to a disturbing tale of murder and madness.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593199-66-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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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