For fans only, and they’re well advised to take notes reminding them who’s on first.
Cork O’Connor’s latest case is a search through the Minnesota wilderness for a missing person. But that’s the only thing that’s straightforward about it.
Edina real estate attorney Louis Morriseau’s pitch couldn’t be simpler. His wife has gone AWOL with her lover, and Lou wants Cork to step away from the grill at Sam’s Place and look for her. Cork’s not interested until he hears the identity of Dolores Morriseau’s alleged lover: Henry Meloux, the ancient healer at Crow Point reservation, who must be close to 100. Certain that this disappearance isn’t what it seems, he agrees to take a look. Shortly thereafter he gets a second surprise: The missing Dolores turns up and indicates that the man who hired Cork doesn’t look a bit like her husband. As if that weren’t confusing enough, the false Lou Morriseau has vanished himself. Soon enough Dolores disappears again. So do Henry and his great-niece, Rainy, who’s married to Cork. Naturally, Cork broadens his search. So do a whole lot of other people, including Stephen O’Connor, Cork and Rainy’s son; and law student Belle Morriseau, Lou’s sister. The Minnesota woods would probably be crawling with searchers even without the presence of LeLoup, an Ojibwe tracker who works for a hard-nosed man named Kimball, whose other hirelings seem to be lurking, fully armed, behind every tree as they look for Lou Morriseau themselves. Constantly cutting back and forth among the different searchers and their prey, Krueger gradually teases out Indigenous fables, myths, and wisdom that Cork will have to draw on if he’s to emerge from this free-for-all with his franchise intact.
For fans only, and they’re well advised to take notes reminding them who’s on first.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2871-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
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
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