You can expect mystery, action, and bloodshed in this exciting thriller launched straight from the peaceful shores of Maine.
A secret past catches up with a former CIA agent, with bloody results.
Maggie Bird, age 60, is comfortably retired in Purity, Maine, where she considers herself “a small-town chicken farmer.” Out of the spy game for 16 years, she certainly doesn't want her history to be discovered. “Here on Blackberry Farm,” she says, “I've found a measure of peace, even happiness.” But a woman, possibly CIA, tracks her down and asks for Maggie’s help in locating a missing agent. Soon after, the woman’s body ends up in Maggie’s driveway. So much for an uneventful retirement. The complex plot weaves back in time to when Maggie meets her future husband, Dr. Danny Gallagher, in Bangkok. She loves him oh so much but deceives the poor man about her clandestine livelihood. But then, maybe their accidental encounter doesn’t happen by chance at all. In the present, Jo Thibodeau, Purity’s acting chief of police, is frustrated because the state police take control of the murder case. That doesn’t stop her from asking a lot of uncomfortable questions about who the hell Maggie Bird really is. Maggie is part of the Martini Club, where she socializes with a klatch of other retired CIA agents who cheerfully deflect Thibodeau’s persistent queries. “She can’t outsmart us but she can outlast us,” Maggie thinks of the chief. The story has some nice lines as it moves to London, Bangkok, and Milan before ending in Purity: “The killer must have been in bad-breath distance of him.” And Chief Thibodeau, smelling a man’s good cooking, thinks, “Too bad she didn’t have a man at home, cooking for her.” But Maggie is a pebble in Thibodeau’s shoe, and it’s easy to imagine a series with the two of them. This is a nice take on retirement—five old spooks whose bones may ache but whose minds remain sharp.
You can expect mystery, action, and bloodshed in this exciting thriller launched straight from the peaceful shores of Maine.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781662515125
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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