A thrilling crime story, captivatingly dramatic and psychologically astute.
In DePrima’s thriller, a reporter investigates the attempted murder of her police officer fiance and follows an increasingly lurid trail of evidence.
J.T. Kennard (she generally answers to Jess) is content to live quietly; she’s a reporter in Kentucky who largely covers “all things equine,” often in the world of horse racing. Her placid existence is shattered by tragedy when her fiance, Joe Schuler, a Louisville Metro cop, is found gravely injured, apparently the result of a car accident during a terrible snowstorm. His skull is fractured, and he’s put on life support, with his prospects for recovery far from clear. After Jess speaks to Lieutenant Alex Washburn, Joe’s immediate supervisor, she concludes he wasn’t in an accident at all; he was a superb driver, and his worst injuries seem to have been inflicted after the crash—she surmises that he was forced off the road and then brutally beaten. Jess conducts an investigation of her own, one as journalistically painstaking as it is relentless. She is a memorable hero, strikingly drawn by the author. In a heated conversation with Joe’s doctor, she rebukes his suggestion that he may have been overly optimistic about Joe’s condition: “You think you’ve given us false hope. I don’t give a flying fuck about your emotional health. What are you going to do about Joe?” Eventually, another body is discovered in the same pond as Joe’s truck. The dead girl is Samantha Catlett, a college classmate of Joe’s son, Josh, and a girl who was unabashed about her crush on Joe. This discovery raises uncomfortable questions about why she was with Joe, and Jess aims not only to find those who attacked him but also to protect his reputation. This is a complex tale, but the author never permits it to descend into convoluted tail-chasing, even as Joe’s assault is revealed to be part of a larger, gruesomely dark conspiracy. The book is the best kind of hard-boiled crime drama—intelligently conceived, powerfully executed, and, for all its unpredictability, chillingly plausible.
A thrilling crime story, captivatingly dramatic and psychologically astute.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798987508824
Page Count: 300
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.
Having been falsely convicted of murder himself years ago, prosecutor Rusty Sabich defies common wisdom in defending his romantic partner’s adopted son against the same accusation.
Now 76, Rusty has retired to the (fictitious) Skageon Region in the upper Midwest, far removed from Kindle County, Turow’s Chicago stand-in, where he was a star attorney and judge. Aaron Housley, a Black man raised in a bleached rural environment, has had his troubles, including serving four months for holding drugs purchased by Mae Potter, his erratic, on-and-off girlfriend. Now, after suddenly disappearing to parts unknown with her, he returns alone. When days go by without Mae’s reappearance, it is widely assumed that Aaron harmed her. Why else would he be in possession of her phone? Following the discovery of Mae’s strangled body and incriminating evidence that points to Aaron, Rusty steps in. Opposed in court by the uncontrollable, gloriously named prosecutor Hiram Jackdorp, he fears he’s in a lose-lose situation. If he fails to get Aaron off, which is highly possible, the boy’s mother, Bea, will never forgive him. If Rusty wins the case, the quietly detached Bea—who, like half the town, has secrets—will have trouble living with the unsparing methods Rusty uses to free Aaron. In attempting to match, or at least approach, the brilliance of his groundbreaking masterpiece Presumed Innocent (1987), Turow has his own odds to overcome. No minor achievement like a previous follow-up, Innocent (2010), the new novel is a powerful display of straightforward narrative, stuffed with compelling descriptions of people, places, and the legal process. No one stages courtroom scenes better than this celebrated Chicago attorney. But the book, whose overly long scenes add up to more than 500 pages, mostly lacks the gripping intensity and high moral drama to keep those pages turning. It’s an absorbing and entertaining read, but Turow’s fans have come to expect more than that.
An accomplished but emotionally undercooked courtroom drama by the author who made that genre popular.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538706367
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
