A brisk, action-packed tale featuring a complex amateur detective.
An ex-Marine wrestling with anger hunts a serial killer in Pace’s thriller.
Belle Bannon is trying to make ends meet as a hunting guide and a ski patroller in Park City, Utah. She has a dark secret, and it’s one that drove her out of the military: She has intermittent explosive disorder, a condition in which certain stimuli can cause disproportionate, uncontrolled rage. Park City’s preeminent event, the Sundance Film Festival, is the site of a series of deadly accidents, resulting in the deaths of a Wisconsin politician, an A-list actor, a local judge, and a high school senior to whom Belle was close. Belle suspects that the deaths are somehow connected, and she’s proved right: A vengeful killer who calls herself the Sword of Justice has been orchestrating them. The Sword is in a relationship with Danny Pagano, a drug dealer whom Belle crosses, and before long, Belle is dodging multiple attempts on her life. She joins forces with Carrie Palmer, her new ski patrol friend, and Alonzo Longabaugh, an attractive Drug Enforcement Agency operative, as they attempt to determine who the Sword is. They also seek to prevent the death of her next target—a top DEA official—while racing against the clock. Meanwhile, Belle struggles with guilt over the deaths of three fellow Marines. Fortunately, Carrie, a pacifist; Alonzo, a fellow veteran; and Belle’s uncle Sal, a lawyer, are there to provide much-needed support. This novel provides a promising start to a new series. Pace, the author of Dead Light(2013), brings his background as an attorney to his latest thriller, which lends a sense of authenticity to the various legal obstacles that Belle faces during her investigation. However, readers may find it baffling that local law enforcement doesn’t make more of an effort to investigate a distinct uptick in deaths during the city’s busiest time of year. Still, Belle’s doggedness in searching for answers more than makes up for the indifference surrounding her. Ultimately, Pace’s narrative flies along like an expert skier on one of Park City’s famous slopes.
A brisk, action-packed tale featuring a complex amateur detective.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64583-073-3
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Foundations Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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