A gritty and explosive tale of resilience and rebellion set in a vividly drawn urban battleground.
Sarda presents a thriller set in the lively streets of Hamburg, Germany, where revolution and murder push an antihero to her limits.
Edda Green, hardened by her past as a Bundeswehr bomb disposal expert, is defined by her duality; she has an unrelenting drive, tempered by vulnerability born of loss. Her prosthetic hand, a grim souvenir of a Kandahar explosion, becomes a powerful symbol of her resilience and adaptability in a world that offers no safety. Released from prison under the control of the BKA (Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office), Edda’s defiance adds complexity to her role as she turns a covert mission assignment into a personal crusade. Her relentless pursuit of her blood-brother’s killers reveals her fierce loyalty, but also a troubling willingness to embrace risk. The bond between Edda and her mission partner, Indigo, while intensely magnetic, effectively captures the fragility of trust in a volatile world. Indigo’s hacking brilliance and Edda’s physical grit form a bond that’s as dangerous as it is compelling, both to their enemies and to themselves. Over the course of the novel, Sarda’s prose further enhances this dynamic with crackling dialogue and moments of emotional intensity (“Indigo misread her twisted smile. ‘I really care about you, Edda. Really’”), making their relationship a cornerstone of the narrative. The backdrop of Hamburg, with its World War II–era ruins and rebellious streets, amplifies the tension and reflects the narrative’s dark, unrelenting tone. Sarda’s attention to detail makes the city pulsate with life, with its characters—from revolutionaries to detectives—inhabiting a space that feels both chaotic and meticulously realized. It draws readers into a noir world where every interaction crackles with danger and consequence.
A gritty and explosive tale of resilience and rebellion set in a vividly drawn urban battleground.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9783982266596
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Highway 99 Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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