A hard-boiled thriller that's equally good at love and theft.
After pulling off an audacious jewel heist from a Las Vegas hotel boutique, Alex Cassidy decides it's time to get out of the game. But his criminal associates won't let him quit until he does their bidding one more time.
Alex has good reasons to retire—not only his slice of the $22 million grab, but also Diane Alison, the charismatic celebrity caterer he falls for while hiding out in New Jersey. Alex quickly realizes that he met her once before—some 20 years ago with his teenage partner in theft, Clay. Clay and Diane subsequently entered into an ill-fated romance that ended when he was shot to death. She later gave birth to their son, Tom. Now, during an impromptu family gathering in Mexico that started out as a romantic getaway for Alex and Diane, the wayward Tom is swept away by Alex's spirited daughter, Paola. She is visiting from Colombia, where she lives with her mother. Things go south for everyone when Tom and Paola are abducted as a way to convince Alex to go to the south of Spain and deliver to the bad guys a Chinese fat cat threatening to sue Vegas power brokers over the loss of his pre-purchased $7 million necklace. Though furious at Alex for putting her child at risk, Diane flies off with him to Spain and becomes a key player in the Mission: Impossible–style team he assembles. Her transformation happens rather quickly. And Tom (introduced in Parish's Down the Shore, 2014) and Paola drop out of the book rather abruptly. But like Don Winslow, Parish is both a hard-bitten storyteller and a very good writer. A drug-altered scene "liquefies and darkens like sugar over heat." And the plot heats up just right.
A hard-boiled thriller that's equally good at love and theft.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54524-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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