A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous...
A newspaper reporter faces a literal deadline when his editor assigns him to investigate a Mexican drug lord.
One fateful evening in 1993, El Paso Tribune photographer Eddie Stevenson walks into his editor Ken Perry’s office, his face a bloody mess. When the editor asks what happened, the photog say that thugs, sent by wealthy Mexican drug lord Gustavo Jiménez, beat him up, smashed his cameras, and told him to deliver a message to crime reporter Tom Harley, telling him that he’s “dead meat.” The beating becomes front-page news and emboldens Perry: “We’re going to expose that señor and his whole rotten business,” he tells the Associated Press, “even if it takes us to the president of Mexico.” But is Harley the right reporter for the assignment? “Harley was lazy, an anthropologist” is the office scuttlebutt, so, in order to “light a fire under the story,” the editors put reporter Hank Klinger on it—and to light a fire under him, they mention the story’s Pulitzer Prize possibilities. The assault and the national press attention it draws set in motion a twisty, suspenseful thriller in which players on both sides of the border act on increasingly suspect motives. Baker, author of The Boost (2014), cannily sets his story in the early 1990s, when newspapers, big and small, could topple governments, and reporters weren’t dismissed as purveyors of “fake news.” The author, a former journalist for the El Paso Herald-Post during the same time period, not only knows the lay of the land, but also the ins and outs of news reporting. At one point, a journalist realizes that he’d neglected to report a major crime: “He’d played detective and forgotten about his job. Burying a story like that could get him fired.” It’s a densely populated narrative, but some characters stand out, such as banker Diana Clements, Stevenson’s unlikely girlfriend, in whom savvy readers will sense a bit of danger.
A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous milieu.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-299-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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