An offbeat but effective mystery thriller.
A crackerjack journalist and her super-smart dog investigate a case of corporate espionage in Reece’s debut thriller.
Investigative executive producer Amy Hart is a force to be reckoned with in Atlanta, where she leads a news team that develops newspaper, television, and radio content (“Her reporters, researchers, producers, and photographers are the most feared gang of muckrakers in the southeast”). They’ve just stumbled upon a case of corporate espionage involving a beautiful woman who’s sexually leveraging key staff to gain company secrets (Amy’s media-savvy team dubs the story “sexpionage”). It turns out the woman who’s blackmailing these employees is a former star model named Elise Nordstrom, and she’s working with a terrifying giant of a man known only as Blackmon. The case is much more complex than it initially appears, and Amy, along with lead reporter Tim Atwood and chief cameraman Cody Clark, may be endangering her life by intervening. In a strange quirk of fate, Amy’s pet dog, Jake, until recently a pretty normal canine, has become hyper-intelligent following a burst of lightning during a thunderstorm. Can Amy and her team— Jake included—report the story without ending up dead on the nightly news? Reece, a former broadcast journalist, constructs this tale with an observant (and somewhat cynical) eye for how media professionals think about crime: “The audience is going to love the Nightsnatch series,” Amy gushes about a recently completed story. “They’ll get to see real villains caught in the act. Some of them will be people they know for Christ’s sake…friends…neighbors…relatives. It’ll make a great lead-up to the sex-for-secrets package during sweeps.” The oddest element by far is the fact that the book is narrated by Jake, the dog, whose ability to communicate with Amy telepathically is neither played for levity nor particularly relevant to the larger plot. Readers who can roll with this unusual narrative approach—or who just love dogs—will enjoy this otherwise straightforward tale.
An offbeat but effective mystery thriller.Pub Date: March 9, 2023
ISBN: 9798378467372
Page Count: 379
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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