A timely mystery-thriller that will keep readers guessing as to the why, how, and surprising who.
In Steward’s meta-novel, what begins as a puff-piece documenting a young and ambitious executive becomes a dangerous story threatening the powerful…and the author herself.
Like found-footage films, this work of fiction presents itself as nonfiction. The author introduces herself as a freelance journalist: “This is the first book I’ve written,” she states as prologue. “It will also be my last.” This purported piece of investigative journalism, “taken from hundreds of hours of interviews, thousands of pages of HUB documents, and terabytes of internal media files,” documents “the death of Hendricks United Bank, an institution that, with more than twenty billion dollars in assets and headquartered in downtown Indianapolis, was one of the largest privately-owned banks in the country until it vanished in 2022.” Steward brands this “one of the biggest scandals in financial services history…how one hundred million dollars was stolen from HUB in a matter of seconds on New Year’s Eve 2021.” It all begins with Steward, a self-described “eager young journalist,” profiling Steve Clemens, HUB’s chief lending officer and the first in a proposed “Young Leaders of Indianapolis” series. Her “harmless, feel-good story” becomes anything but when she becomes entangled in the audacious robbery, an inside job with roots in the cancellation of the devastating debt plaguing a cancer-stricken single mother whose “sonofabitch” husband abandoned her and her teenage daughter. A quote from Oliver Stone’s film JFK serves the author (and readers) well: “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Why? The ‘How’ and the ‘Who’ is just scenery for the public.” The author deftly teases all this out, employing convincing “documentation” and artful misdirection. (“I stand behind every word in this story,” she cheekily proclaims.) Steward cannily taps into dissatisfaction with Big Banks and all corporations whose corrupt cultures are a violation of their clients’ trust. The characterizations are strong and nuanced, eschewing cartoon villainy, and effective foreshadowing fuels anticipation to see how things unfold.
A timely mystery-thriller that will keep readers guessing as to the why, how, and surprising who.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9798218482640
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Burning Secrets
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
