The author ups the ante in this entertaining thriller series outing starring a troubled hero.
In this novel, a National Defense Agency operative races to pull the plug on a team of hackers extorting power plants.
“Computer geek” Ronny Wolstein is in deep debt to Presser, who finances his scams. That means he’s got a problem. But he also has a solution: installing ransomware in several hydroelectric power plants, which will cause catastrophic destruction until the powers that be meet his payment demands. He works with two former high school “besties” who are in as dire financial straits as he is. Engineering guru David Owens’ daughter requires expensive medical treatments. Shirley Chen, providing security, is a “horribly disfigured” veteran. The money from Wolstein’s plan will pay for her plastic surgery. The trio preys on unwilling accomplices who are as vulnerable as they are, such as Kenneth Cramer, a plant worker with a gambling problem that causes him to be delinquent on his child support payments, threatening his visitation privileges. After two devastating ransomware attacks, Capt. KD Thorne of the National Defense Agency and her partner, Warrant Officer Jeffrey Blunt, are brought in to stop the hackers. Thorne carries baggage of a different type, but it’s no less burdensome. She struggles to reconcile “the stupid things she’d done after her husband had left her.” Though the two appear to be in “a good place,” they are still divorced. This is the third Thorne procedural (as in the grand Columbo tradition, readers are clued in to Wolstein and company’s doings and follow anxiously as Thorne and Blunt get ever closer to him and Presser). Generic title aside, this novel is a briskly enjoyable read. Chen’s character is particularly well written and psychologically attuned. She is desperate to “fit in” and not be “a freak show who could only attract pervs who wanted to kiss her scars while they fucked her or take her from behind so they wouldn’t have to look at her.” Series fans invested in Thorne’s fraught relationship with her ex-husband will welcome progress on that front. In addition, King deftly builds anticipation for a fourth volume.
The author ups the ante in this entertaining thriller series outing starring a troubled hero.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781952711138
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Blurred Lines Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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