An unpredictable but overwrought thriller.
In this crime novel, the police ineptly attempt to track down an abducted woman while she struggles to escape from her captors.
Eddie Winston, the book’s protagonist, has achieved financial success but is still traumatized by the disappearance of his beloved girlfriend, Holly Austin. After three years with no trace of her, Winston has spiraled into abject loneliness and depression. His only companions are his intuitive dog, Bobo, and a constant supply of alcohol. Out drinking one night, he senses his romantic life may be taking a positive turn when he hooks up with Lori Pritchet, a much younger acquaintance. But after a few happy hours together, Lori leaves his house to retrieve her car and vanishes. Already suspected of having some involvement in Holly’s disappearance, Winston is immediately considered a person of interest when Lori goes missing. Winston’s good looks and charm predispose some to think the worst of him, particularly envious men. Meanwhile, Lori’s abductors are torturing her in the eponymous attic. Police detectives and partners Mike Johnson and Amy Foster are split over the case. Johnson believes in Winston’s guilt and stops at nothing to implicate and frame him. Foster includes Winston in the search, hoping to develop a personal relationship with him. Back in the attic, indefatigable Lori tries to MacGyver her way to freedom. With a slat broken off the bed frame, she smashes a mirror to create sharp weapons: “Now if I only had a scabbard to house this dagger looking thing, I could stash it on my person. Of course, I had to wear a blouse that doesn’t even cover my belly button.” In Wilson’s hodgepodge of a story, the N-word is tossed around by White men, misogynist descriptions are frequent and unwelcome, and several women are ruled by their libidos. Some women lose their abilities to reason around handsome Winston. When Foster contrives a reason to sleep at Winston’s house, she sighs: “Oh, and Eddie, for the record, I’m not wearing any panties either.” But the conclusion of this high-stakes tale comes with a surprising twist, illustrating a vivid imagination at work.
An unpredictable but overwrought thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9981651-0-3
Page Count: 437
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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