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WHITE FOX

A slightly shaggy conclusion to a generally worthwhile enterprise.

Alexander Vasin returns for the last installment of the trilogy that began with Black Sun (2019).

Having stepped on some powerful toes in his previous adventure (Red Traitor, 2021), Vasin has been assigned the command of a vestigial prison camp in the deep reaches of Siberia, where, insufficiently brutal by nature, he coexists uneasily with his more effective second-in-command. Then his KGB boss, Gen. Orlov, saddles him with Andrei Fyodorov, a special-status prisoner to be kept secret and alive at any cost. When a gang of Chechen prisoners riots and takes over most of the camp, Vasin, Fyodorov, and a small group manage a tricky escape during which Vasin learns what is special about his prisoner. Fyodorov claims to have been ordered to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and to have documentation proving it. Though he refused, feeling Oswald was too unstable, the assassination took place. The documentation is of interest to many people: Fyodorov wants to leverage an escape from the Soviet Union, a KGB faction wants to suppress it and kill Fyodorov, and Vasin sees in it an opportunity to get back to Moscow and possibly topple Orlov. After the escape from the Chechens, Vasin and Fyodorov conduct a cross-country hide-and-seek dance—Fyodorov keeps escaping and Vasin tracks him down, but because Vasin needs his cooperation, Fyodorov is never clapped in irons or just shot. While the previous volumes of the trilogy are rooted in historical fact, there is no history underpinning this story, and perhaps because it does not have a predetermined endpoint, the whole enterprise feels a little formless. Matthews is reliable in matters of setting and details of Soviet life, but the narration lacks focused energy.

A slightly shaggy conclusion to a generally worthwhile enterprise.

Pub Date: March 7, 2023

ISBN: 9780385543446

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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THE CRASH

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

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WARD D

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

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