An uneven historical thriller that features a compelling central relationship.
A crime-fighting couple’s consuming love for each other is put to the test when they’re recruited to identify a global counterfeiter in Haddon’s sequel.
After husband-and-wife team Tommy and Hannah Sinclair break up a human trafficking ring and a drug-dealing operation, the FBI asks them to use their skills and talents for a new mission. An international counterfeiting organization of unknown origin has emerged in the United States, France, and Italy, and the pair must determine who’s behind it. Tommy has an eidetic memory, which will be useful when it comes to dealing with bank-note serial numbers, as well as a handy background as a gambler and Mafia associate. Hannah, 14 years his junior, is his able partner, but she’s not pleased that this new assignment may require him to seduce the counterfeiter’s vulnerable wife. “She’ll fall in love with you,” Hannah cries. “I won’t let that happen,” he responds. Hannah has a dangerous role to play in the undercover operation, as well, although she’s only recently recovered from injuries from the previous mission; she’s also wrestling with the psychological trauma of a miscarriage. Nonetheless, like Tommy, she’s ready to get back to work. Haddon dutifully fills in backstory for readers who may be unfamiliar with the first volume in this series, and the beginning passages will quickly hook them: “We haven’t heard from [the FBI] for over a year. The last time was when I shot Lord George Gillingham.” Tommy and Hannah are a disarmingly charming couple to find at the center of a tale of global intrigue. However, Haddon’s scene-setting is less skillful, as one never gets a sense of the era in which the story takes pace; indeed, it’s only in the author’s “Final Thoughts” that readers learn that the tale is set in the ’50s. Romance fans, however, will warm to Hannah’s intense devotion to Tommy and the couple’s passionate (and graphic) bouts of lovemaking; readers’ mileage may vary, though, when Tommy tells a willing Hannah, “I want to leave my mark on you so you won’t forget me while I am away.”
An uneven historical thriller that features a compelling central relationship.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64628-819-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Tensile Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch’s 34th year proves to be his most eventful ever.
It begins when Mike, newly demoted from investigator, sees flames half a mile away and rushes into a burning house, where he’s too late to rescue Jenna Malloy or her husband, gym owner Brian. The only survivor is a baby girl Mike finds in the arms of a neighbor, Karen Kershaw. Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy Chet Bessel’s reaction to the tragedy tells Mike the deaths won’t be widely mourned. They’re not the only ones that won’t. Soon afterward, the discovery of Axl Deming’s body on the railroad tracks suggests that whoever killed the presumed rapist and murderer of teenager Emily Crockett is bent on vigilante justice. Since the victims are “two of the most hated people in Maine—three if you count Jenna Malloy,” suspects would seem to be everywhere. Mike, repeatedly warned off the case because he’s no longer an investigator, can’t resist focusing on Karen Kershaw, who fled the scene while he was questioning her, and Edward Gudgeon, a scallop diver who frequented the same bar as Axl and his ex-con brother, Shayn. Mike’s on the right track, but his quest will take a twisty route through many more ambushes, confrontations, brushes with fellow law officers who end up suspending him, and threats to his wife, EMT Stacey Stevens, and their newborn son, Charles. Doiron tightens this web with an insistent mastery that will keep most readers from noticing just how far-reaching it is until they’ve gained the end and can take some deep, cleansing breaths.
The best news: The year goes on long enough for the hero to be reinstated. Whew!Pub Date: June 30, 2026
ISBN: 9781250864451
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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