Choice Nordic noir featuring a pressure-cooker scenario, gripping action, and nerve-wracking psychological tension.
A Danish detective is blackmailed into exacting vigilante justice in Krefeld’s thriller.
Inspector Cecilie Mars is a Copenhagen police detective with impressive sleuthing instincts, a barren personal life, an intermittent drug habit, and nightmares of past trauma. One night, as she’s tailing a rape suspect, she sees his car crash, struggles with him after he attacks her, and improperly flees the scene; after he turns up dead, Cecilie receives a video of the encounter edited to appear that she killed him. “Lazarus,” the anonymous maker of the video, threatens to publicize it unless she agrees to carry out his agenda to kill rapists and murderers who got off with light sentences courtesy of Denmark’s lax justice system (and who are presumably plotting new crimes). Her involvement grows deeper and bloodier with each assignment until Lazarus tasks her with killing her own rapist, a man who assaulted her when she was 17 and has now kidnapped a new victim. This tortuous situation ties Cecilie up in moral knots: The monsters Lazarus has her hunting must be stopped, yet she’s also committing serious offenses—and probably being set up by Lazarus to be framed for murder. In Giles’ deft English translation, Krefeld’s tale is an intricate police procedural, taut with intrigue that explodes into terrifying violence, and a gritty depiction of a far-from-quaint Copenhagen characterized by cynical legal bureaucrats, grim concrete high-rises, and menacing street gangs. The prose is energetic and colorful, even Wagnerian at times—“You shall be my thrall in Valhalla!” thunders one psycho as he prepares to sacrifice a woman to Odin—but equally adept at evoking the queasy, claustrophobic feeling of victimization (revisiting her attack, Cecilie bleakly recalls “[t]he smell of urine emanating from him, mixing with the stench of the dumpsters. His limpness. The many slaps to her face that he delivered, slowly making him hard and ready.”) The result is an engrossing page-turner as Cecilie snakes her way through a seemingly inescapable maze.
Choice Nordic noir featuring a pressure-cooker scenario, gripping action, and nerve-wracking psychological tension.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 978-1039424975
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.
Jack Ryan Jr. and company race to stop a killer wave in this Tom Clancy thriller.
The ship Meridian Star departs eastern Russia unknowingly carrying a pair of containers with radioactive cesium chloride. The vessel is hijacked and scuttled in Micronesia near the Mariana Trench, and the crew is murdered. A huge insurance claim results, and Jack, an accomplished deep-sea diver who works for Hendley Associates, is there to investigate. The hostile Chinese learn it’s there and want that illicit cargo. Meanwhile, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center discovers a huge, mysterious object in 600 feet of water. At that depth, the pressure is unsurvivable without complex special equipment, which is vintage Tom Clancy. Whatever the strange object is, it’s “not a ship…not a submarine…not an aircraft.” On the side is a faded hammer and sickle and Cyrillic letters that spell Siren. Ryan teams up with Navy divers, and they look for a way to safely enter and explore the object. They discover that the underwater contraption has thermonuclear warheads attached, left and long forgotten by the USSR. If the warheads explode, they could still achieve their apparent purpose—to trigger a tsunami and destroy Guam, which is strategically important to the U.S. The Chinese know it too, and the race is on to take control. The result is plenty of high-stakes undersea action, where death can come from a bullet, a knife, or a sliced air hose. But there’s action on land, too. Navy master diver Carla Bennett and Jack take on a surprise assault in a hotel where Carla shows off stellar fighting skills—better than Jack’s. These two aren’t the only heroes here, as there’s a well-balanced cast of characters, all brave and likable. And of course—of course—where there’s a bomb, there’s a ticking clock.
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798217183166
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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