A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.
A tech firm revives long-deceased historical geniuses for nefarious purposes in Unwin’s futuristic thriller.
Physicist Dr. Art Cornysh has been summoned from Tennessee to Seattle to interview with the Robin Hood–themed Locksley capital markets company, a firm that doesn’t specialize in anything he’s good at or trained in. Art’s life partner, Thea, a math teacher, revels in the opportunity, but Art is skeptical of the offer. At a lavish party, aggressive grooming by a mysterious executive works its magic, and Art finally gives in and accepts their offer. But things in the company start unraveling immediately: When employee Roxanne “Rox” Wells starts toying with facial recognition software and uncovers stunning evidence that Locksley has been cloning historical geniuses, she is abruptly terminated. Rox and co-worker Peter “Bunny” Bunsen team with Art to examine digital side-by-side comparisons of employees (themselves included) whose appearances resemble those of younger versions of “magni” geniuses Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and others. Together, they must decipher the manipulations conducted for years by Locksley’s CEO, David Maduro, who is taking the business over from his father—whose plan was to regenerate a series of “great minds” from history to build the beginnings of a “master race.” In a nasty, lethal battle of wits and strategic maneuvering, Rox, Bunny, and Art work tirelessly to expose the Maduro family’s scheme to extract DNA samples from the graves of the greatest intellects of all time. The author keeps the chapters briskly clipped, which adds to the suspense factor in this futuristic, high-tech tale of double-crossing duplicates (“with the arm that had been wrapped around her, she’s swept up by the crook of her legs and carried toward the banister. The frenzy of her limbs accelerates as she’s taken, feet first, toward a ten-story plunge”). A final showdown pitting brilliant minds of the past against contemporary thinkers makes for a memorable climax.
A clever, complex techno-puzzle with authentic characters and a tight, smartly arranged setup.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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