A taut, timely, terrific thriller.
A freshly minted police detective doesn’t believe a man died of natural causes, and his investigation leads all the way to Russia.
In Meredith’s fast-paced thriller, San Francisco homicide detective Steve Nguyen gets his first solo assignment: investigate the death of 31-year-old Luke Miller, an accountant at The Glass Foundation. Established by Julian Glass, an Eastern European transplant with ties to the United States Senate, the foundation supports groups focusing on education, health, and the environment. Steve’s news of Luke’s suspicious death—no forced entry, drugs, or trauma—shocks the foundation’s human resources head, Jennifer Krauss. Although 10 years older than Luke, the two were close friends. Jenn marveled at Luke’s attention to detail, saying he could find “things, little things, buried deep in an audit.” Unknown to anyone except Executive Director Roger Dayton, Luke also found one big thing: a file detailing questionable payments from international companies. Roger, who has ties to Russia, told his Russian contact that Luke discovered the file. The Russian arranged for the accountant’s elimination by an assassin and suggested that Luke may have told Jenn about his discovery. Forget #MeToo: Roger woos his underling to find out. He also helps in bugging her apartment and phone, allowing the Russians to hear what Steve tells her about the investigation’s progress. Meanwhile, Jenn becomes intrigued with Steve. She asks his cousin Tina—a smart-mouthed lawyer—for Steve’s backstory and learns “he’s addled with self-doubt.” Indeed, the detective’s sessions with his therapist add depth to the character and make the book more than a thriller, albeit an exciting one. Meredith’s characters are intriguing, fresh, and flawed. For example, Tina wears her “most revealing blouses to police interrogations. She’d use anything to her advantage, including her well-proportioned figure.” Steve—a Vietnamese American Stanford Law dropout and Bruce Lee look-alike, per Tina—graduated from the University of California at Berkeley at the age of 20. But he now has trouble fitting in as a policeman—“a career not wholly embraced” by his family. The plot, laced with deception and betrayal, seems frighteningly possible. Women and minorities have significant roles; the dialogue is smart; and the descriptions are strong: “It was noon, and the squad room smelled like a food court.”
A taut, timely, terrific thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60452-191-7
Page Count: 390
Publisher: BluewaterPress LLC
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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