An often entertaining story with a darkly comic edge.
Fields presents a crime novel about two very different young men in rural Pennsylvania.
In 1982, Lucas Bradshaw is a Black track star at the Robert E. Lee Academy in Whittaker, Virginia. He doesn’t particularly like it there, and he despises the fact that racial slurs are casually “tossed around everywhere in this school.” However, he has dreams of going to college in Oregon to run, and he plans to take his girlfriend, Dolly Stewart, with him. These aspirations are shattered one day when two other students at the academy go on a shooting spree, killing Dolly and several others. He stops the slaughter by seizing the gun of a reluctant deputy and taking down both shooters himself. Afterward, Lucas’ coach is concerned that the young man will be arrested for taking a cop’s weapon, so he sends him out of state for his own safety. He goes on to attend Bloomington High School in Pennsylvania and strike up a most unlikely friendship with Jeremiah Willis, who lives in a cabin with his rugged, World War I veteran grandfather. Jeremiah knows all about the wilderness though very little about school and even less about finding a girlfriend. He and Lucas are soon involved in some very odd adventures—which sometimes edge into violence. The story is ambitious from the get-go, as it tackles such issues as racism and school shootings, and it takes unexpected turns, as when Jeremiah traps a local real estate agent in the forest. A fair number of people are killed over the course of the story, which includes a suicide, but an unexpected streak of very dark humor is always present, which keeps things lively. For instance, when one of the students involved in the early killing spree suggests they add a personal touch to their crimes, the other responds, “Why waste all that time when we could spend it on killing?” Other elements are less enticing, such as a subplot about two young lovers that adds little to the story as a whole. However, when Jeremiah is speeding through the night in a stolen Mercedes with a loaded Winchester, such points become moot.
An often entertaining story with a darkly comic edge.Pub Date: May 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984577-36-8
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Xlibris Corp
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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