A gripping spy thriller with an indelible cast.
An American gets pulled into a shadowy league of international sleeper agents in this novel.
Michael Trick is approached by a Russian man shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Trick’s parents were East German spies; he is now being activated as a sleeper agent in California, assigned to steal technology from his employer for the Russians. Trick goes to the FBI to report the mission, not out of patriotic fervor, but because his son is very sick and he can’t risk going to jail. The FBI assigns Trick a handler, and the bureau intends to use him to get to the people who activated him and possibly to a murderous Russian sleeper agent named Peter Kirov. Then other known sleepers start turning up dead, and it becomes a race to figure out who their Russian leader is and what the culprit’s agenda might be. The novel presents two parallel stories. Trick gets pressured to do increasingly heinous acts while the FBI trails him to get more information about his Russian liaison. Meanwhile, Kirov manages his list of hits and a domestic situation with tenants in his building. But then Trick’s shadowy contact sends him to kill Kirov. Trick and Kirov have a common enemy and forge an unlikely alliance as they struggle to free themselves from both the Russian sleeper agents and American law enforcement. Oster’s story is engrossing, but there are a few minor defects. Some of the technology and pop-culture references are a little too recent for the era, so the book isn’t always grounded in its period setting. The setup is purposefully vague, and there are a lot of characters and subplots, which can make the tale a bit hard to follow. Still, the narrative moves along briskly, and the characters are complex. Even Kirov, a coldblooded killer, has a compelling backstory that makes him sympathetic, and readers may root for the quiet romance he pursues with a neighbor. The suspense builds slowly, but as Trick gets in way over his head, readers will be on the edges of their seats.
A gripping spy thriller with an indelible cast.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 7, 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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