A deceptively slim yet viciously potent slice of female retribution.
A group of wronged women takes female empowerment to the extreme in this novel.
As he did in Prisoners of War (2018), Scott taps into American history to roll out a complex yarn that begins during World War II. Mildred Mercer is a teenage prostitute in Dorris, California, in the mid-1940s who is swept away from her downtrodden existence by Pat McBride, a generous soul who buys her a bus ticket to Seattle to start a new life. Headstrong and independent, Millie catches the eye of neighbor Duano Lagomarsino, and a courtship simmers quickly into marriage and a relocation to Bayview, Idaho. Their marriage (and much of the other subplots) hinges on what the author calls “life’s little curve balls,” and soon, Millie’s former occupation comes back to haunt her. But her fierce sense of self-preservation kicks in. This story is joined by the tale of Eleanor Greenberg, whose family is sent to Auschwitz. She is separated from her loved ones to become the pre-pubescent obsession of a Nazi scientist who sexually abuses her. Upon her escape to a kibbutz overlooking the Sea of Galilee, she promises her captor they will reunite one day. The scientist later becomes a United States Navy researcher in Idaho searching for Nazi sympathizers but winds up face to face with “patient huntress” Eleanor. Boosting this plotline are the period details Scott homes in on, such as the price of housing and the apprehensive nature of a traumatized society during wartime. Adding to this melodrama is the intriguing tale of Bernadette Albers, the fifth victim of a serial bigamist con man who “specialized in middle-aged women of questionable beauty.” Bernadette is, like the wives before her, double-crossed and swindled by her duplicitous husband, Randall, but vows to end his string of misdeeds permanently. All of these searing sketches coalesce in Northern Idaho, where the timeline advances to the mid-’90s as the skeletal remains of nine bodies are discovered at the bottom of Spirit Lake. Readers will easily identify those remains and connect them to the men’s cutthroat fates. The sheer brevity of Scott’s novel belies the heft of its central theme about the resurgence of the past and how it can lead to both a painful reunion and an opportunity to avenge atrocities and festering wounds.
A deceptively slim yet viciously potent slice of female retribution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
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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