Great fun for readers who’ve done their background reading and want to try a Gothic Plus.
Two Boston women pay separate yet equally perilous off-season visits to Block Island several fateful months apart.
By the time attorney Thalia Mills gets a letter from Blake Bronson informing her that Blake is the sister she never knew existed, Blake is already dead. She was found with her wrists slit in one of the claw-footed bathtubs in White Hall, the venerable B&B/vineyard/winery kept by Aileen Searles, where Blake, a barely recovering abuser of alcohol and opioids, had gone to confront Maureen Mills, the mother who gave her up for adoption soon after her birth and then pretended she’d never been born. A long flashback to Blake’s visit shows her preparing for the confrontation by spending time with the longtime boyfriend of Maureen’s sister, Fiona, New Shoreham selectman Martin Dempsey, who owns the aptly named restaurant Martin’s Above the Rocks, and his competitor Timmy Graham, of Graham’s Resort, and fighting off their advances. All the while, Blake is falling under the spell of White Hall, which she compares to the haunted settings of The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Rebecca. When the local cops decide that Blake’s apparent suicide was actually murder and place a suspect under arrest, Thalia determines to retrace the footsteps of the sister she never met. The convoluted mystery, in which everyone acts guilty of something because pretty much everyone is, is repeatedly upstaged by what Carmen, in an unusually candid and illuminating afterword, calls her decision to go for “gothic meta,” compelling both her heroines and her villains to play by the rules of the genre even as they recognize their creaky artifice.
Great fun for readers who’ve done their background reading and want to try a Gothic Plus.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781662512988
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A potent and surprising novel by the ever-reliable Crais.
Hired to find the father of celebrity “muffin girl” Traci Beller 10 years after his disappearance, PI Elvis Cole uncovers a nefarious plot that puts his life and those he contacts at risk.
The sweetly likable Traci, now 23, has amassed a huge following with her website, The Baker Next Door, and on social media. Against the advice and self-interest of the people who over-manage her career, she decides to find out what happened to her father. Cole quickly determines that he was last seen at the SurfMutt hamburger stand, where he gave a ride to Anya Given, a troubled 15-year-old whose mother, Sadie, was late in picking her up from the skate park across the street. With the reluctant help of a scattered young woman who used to work at the burger joint, Cole tracks down Anya and Sadie, who is eventually revealed to have a criminal past. For his efforts, he’s jumped by a small gang of men who send him to the hospital with the worst beating of his life. (Asked by a nurse what his name is, the best he can guess is “Los Angeles.”) Still in recovery, Cole and Joe Pike, his ex-Marine partner, trace his attackers to Sadie, with unexpected results. As ever, Crais draws the reader in via his protagonist’s casual, dryly humorous manner and the book’s relaxed ties to classic noir. Slowly but surely, the plot gains intensity and deadly purpose. Just when you think the missing persons case is solved, Crais ratchets things up with a devastating follow-through. This is the L.A. novelist’s 20th Cole mystery, following such efforts as The Watchman (2007) and Racing the Light (2022). It may be his most powerful.
A potent and surprising novel by the ever-reliable Crais.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780525535768
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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