How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.
A widowed Pennsylvania dad hears from his estranged daughter on the occasion of her marriage into the 1 percent.
Frank Szatowski, 52, has achievements he’s proud of: “I started driving young, straight out of the army, and I was recently inducted into the Circle of Honor, an elite group of UPS drivers who’ve worked twenty-five years without an accident.” What Frank doesn’t feel so good about is his relationship with his daughter, Maggie, who cut him off a few years ago when he failed her in some as-yet-unrevealed way. But now the "Unknown Caller" on his phone is her, inviting him to Boston to meet her fiance, Aidan Gardner, and to walk her down the aisle at their wedding. From the moment he steps from the elevator into the penthouse Maggie and Aidan share, Frank feels like a fish out of water, and things only get more uncomfortable when Aidan shows no interest in connecting with his future father-in-law. The wedding is held at a private camp in New Hampshire, exquisitely imagined from the waterfront cottages to the brunch buffets to the 10-foot-high security fence. Even before he’s given a 56-page “privacy doc” to sign and ordered to turn his watch ahead 15 minutes to “Gardner Standard Time,” Frank knows there’s something deeply wrong—for one thing, he’s received a flyer in the mail linking Aidan to a local missing person. But his sister, Tammy, is having the time of her life, as is her 10-year-old foster kid, Abigail, and he’s finally mending fences with Maggie; can’t he just kick back and enjoy? Actually…no. In addition to creating a fun, propulsive plot, Rekulak does a great job on all the status details and supporting characters, from the sleazy family lawyer with his barely legal wife to the younger crowd at the wedding. At the welcome dinner, a woman with “a starfish tattoo and long blond hair braided into ropes” offers Frank an Altoids tin of gummy bears. “These are THC with a little extra wild card,” she tells him encouragingly. Hoo boy. There are some wild cards, all right.
How refreshing: a thriller with a narrator who’s almost too reliable.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781250895783
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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