An enthusiastic plot and a swift pace combine with gritty characters in a satisfying thriller.
An aging private investigator tackles a missing person case amid the new millennium in Southern California in this novel.
Canadian author Elliott continues his Angel City series with the adventures of Los Angeles detective Mickey O’Rourke, a hardworking widower who drives a red 1969 Pontiac Catalina convertible, misses his wife, and embodies an ageless tenacity to solve crimes. As a veteran sleuth in his late 70s in 2000, he’s seen everything, so meeting his latest client, Bethany Summers, at her San Fernando Valley porn studio job is nothing to squirm over. The case (which he admits may be his last) involves the sudden disappearance of Jeffrey Strokes, an award-winning, highly compensated porn star on the rise. Running alongside O’Rourke’s investigation is the simmering history two years prior of East Compton couple Jemeka Johnson, a hair stylist, and her boyfriend, Ray-Ray, whom she suspects of being unfaithful. She follows him one night and ends up staring down the barrel of a drug-dealing gangster’s gun during a botched deal. A third subplot, occurring in 1999, features Richie and Alabama, a downtrodden couple subsisting on petty theft, violence, and heroin. They descend on LA to deal and partake in everything the edgy city has to offer—notably, a “big score” involving Strokes, who needs their stash to help with his porn star “stamina.” O’Rourke does his work briskly, sifting through possible suspects, from jealous porn co-stars to informants who confess to meeting Strokes’ shifty drug dealer before the actor vanished, including Bethany’s abusive boyfriend, Riccardo Milano, who has lots to hide. The storylines soon intermingle and coalesce on LA’s tense streets, creating a somewhat overly busy yet consistently gripping tale with many parts kept airborne by Elliott, whose prose never wavers from keeping readers engrossed and entertained. As in the author’s debut, Nobody Move (2019), this polished sequel is also a noir affair suffused with meticulous details and characters at the mercy of the druggy Southern California underbelly. Elliott also has an infectious sense of humor evident throughout the story: an actor whose “lips were so blown up they could keep her afloat at sea” and a street punk sporting a Mohawk “so tall it could stab the sun.” The tale delivers plenty of fast-paced action and menacing bad guys to please hardcore fans of crime fiction.
An enthusiastic plot and a swift pace combine with gritty characters in a satisfying thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-99-908683-1
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Into the Void
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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.
