Well-written, character-driven portrait of small-town New England meets Silence of the Lambs. Strong stomach a plus.
A British novelist turned Maine police detective finds himself investigating a horrific murder.
Nichols follows up his innovative novel The Rocks (2015) with a more familiar type of thriller. In its opening scene we meet three teenage boys, gleefully skateboarding the nighttime streets of sleepy Granite Harbor. When Shane splits off from the group, an observer in a pickup truck rolls after him, a montage of images racing through his brain. “He was beneath the small blond girl riding him like a rocking horse....He was pinned to the ground as boys and girls spread their legs above him....In the woods with Ivan, the Master...[t]he hanging coyote was speaking his name....In his mouth he tasted the bitter pus....” Think we might have a serial killer on our hands? Very soon we will learn the horrific details of his murderous routine, as will Det. Alex Brangwen, the interesting Brit at the center of the novel’s large, well-developed ensemble cast. As Alex was beginning a successful writing career in the U.K.—he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize—his pregnant American wife, truly a bitch on wheels, insisted on moving home to have her baby. Maine, she decided, telling Alex it was beautiful, full of writers, and he’d love it there. But, unfortunately, things went south with both the marriage and his third novel, and he ended up working at the local police department, whose chief, Belinda “Billie” Raintree, had read his books and thought the skill set would translate. Now Shane’s desecrated body turns up on the grounds of the Settlement, a local archaeological site where many locals work as historic re-enactors, Goody this and Goodman that. Shane was a friend of Alex’s now-teenage daughter Sophie, and she and the other two skateboarders become even more alienated from their parents after the murder—particularly problematic because Mr. Weirdo still has them in his sights.
Well-written, character-driven portrait of small-town New England meets Silence of the Lambs. Strong stomach a plus.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250894816
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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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