Perfect reading for socially distanced shut-ins who’ll be pleased to learn that things could indeed be much, much worse.
Tibbehah County Sheriff Quinn Colson’s 10th appearance finds him hard-pressed to keep his patch of Mississippi in line after his near-fatal shooting in The Shameless (2019) sidelines him in favor of an acting sheriff who’s worse than no help at all.
How much worse? Well, when Quinn’s 12-year-old nephew, Jason, goes AWOL along with his schoolmate Ana Gabriel Hernandez-Ramirez to accept an unsavory invitation to follow the trail of Ana’s mother, one of 53 undocumented workers from the local chicken processing plant rounded up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Brock Tanner won’t issue an Amber Alert. It’s clear that Tanner is uncomfortably cozy with grasping madam Fannie Hathcock, “the queen hellcat of north Mississippi”; with J.K. Vardaman, the good-old-boy governor who’s never met a graft he wouldn’t latch onto; and with the Watchmen, a militia looking to boost their stockpile of weapons. Tanner’s deputies harass Quinn’s kid sister, Caddy, and go even further with activist Hector Herrera. The ongoing battle is complicated this time by the release of Donnie Varner from the prison where he’s served eight years for dealing guns. Readers waiting to see whether he’ll renew his friendship with Quinn, find romance with his old flame Caddy, or end up brokering a massive arms deal for the Watchmen will be treated to another bracing immersion in Tibbehah County’s teeming criminal culture, whose opportunistic alliances between bad guys and the lawmen sworn to protect them would be outrageous if they weren’t utterly routine.
Perfect reading for socially distanced shut-ins who’ll be pleased to learn that things could indeed be much, much worse.Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53949-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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