by Alafair Burke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 11, 2022
For those who like a tricky brain teaser and aren't too picky about interesting characters or emotional realism.
A mystery featuring a woman with amnesia in New Jersey, a drowned fishing guide on Long Island, a 15-year-old cold case in Wichita, and much more.
In her 19th mystery, and the sixth to feature detective Ellie Hatcher, Burke has taken the kitchen-sink approach, offering a rare abundance of characters, crimes, and misdemeanors. As much as there is a protagonist, it is a woman who, years ago, was thrown from an SUV in Hopewell, New Jersey, and lost her memory. Hope Miller, as she is now known, has spent the past decade and a half under the wing of a devoted friend she met after the accident, an attorney named Lindsay who lives with a boyfriend named Scott. But as the story opens, Hope has disappeared from Hopewell without leaving Lindsay any information as to her whereabouts. Since she has no legal identity, Hope has to work under the radar; she finds a job staging properties on the East End of Long Island for a sketchy real estate agent named...oh well, turns out he's not that important. Meanwhile, there's Ellie Hatcher, the detective whose series this is. She's on vacation in St. Barth's with her boyfriend, Max, having bad dreams about her dad, a cop who committed suicide because he couldn't find Wichita's College Hill Strangler, who was later arrested and jailed. Then there's this giant home improvement chain also based in Wichita whose female CEO is running for senator...and wait, there's more! This novel seems more like the work of a beginning crime writer than one with Burke's experience. Clues, red herrings, exposition, and "things you should know" are dropped in awkwardly and obviously: "Lindsay had learned that psychological trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder could also induce dissociative fugue, or what used to be called a fugue state—a psychological condition characterized by an inability to recall one’s identity or personality." All this hand-holding aside, the book operates on what feels like a kind of anti–Occam's-razor logic, favoring the most complicated solution to any question. The good news is, there is one.
For those who like a tricky brain teaser and aren't too picky about interesting characters or emotional realism.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-285-336-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
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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
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by Alice Feeney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 2025
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.
Following the mysterious disappearance of his wife, a struggling London novelist journeys to a remote Scottish island to try to get his mojo back—but all, of course, is not what it seems.
Grady Green hits the pinnacle of his publishing career on the same night that his life goes off the rails—first his book lands on the New York Times bestseller list, and then his wife, Abby, goes missing on her way home. A year later, Grady is a mere shadow of his former self: out of money and out of ideas. So, when his agent, Abby’s godmother, suggests that he spend some time on the Isle of Amberly, in a log cabin left to her by one of her writers, it seems as good a plan as any. With free housing for himself and his dog and a beautiful, distraction-free environment, maybe he can finally complete the next novel. But from the very beginning, Grady’s experiences with Amberly seem weird, if not downright ominous: As a visitor, he’s not allowed to bring his car onto the island; the local businesses are only open for a few hours at a time; and there are no birds. At all. Not to mention the skeletal hand he finds buried under the floorboards of the cabin, the creepy harmonica music in the woods, and the occasional sighting of a woman in a red coat who’s a dead ringer for Abby. As Grady falls deeper and deeper into insomnia and alcoholism, he begins to realize his being on the island is no accident—and that should make him very afraid. Through occasional chapters from before Abby’s disappearance, told from her point of view, we learn that Grady is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and the book’s slow unfolding of dread, mystery, and then truth is both creative and well-paced. Every chapter heading is an oxymoron, like the title, reminding us of the contradictions at the heart of every story.
“Nasty little fellows…always get their comeuppance,” a movie character once said. Deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781250337788
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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