This propulsive, haunted thriller proves that competition for New York City real estate really can be deadly.
Although a surprise inheritance sounds like good luck, it turns out to be anything but in a tense, twisty thriller.
New Yorkers Rosie and Chad Lowan have spent most of the first year of their marriage caring for his dying uncle Ivan. Rosie, the novel’s engaging narrator, expects Ivan’s long-estranged daughter, Dana, to inherit his dreamy Park Avenue apartment, so she’s shocked to discover after his death that he’s left it to her and Chad. It’s a huge boon—Chad is an aspiring actor, and Rosie has published one bestselling true-crime book but is struggling to start a second, so money is always tight. The apartment in the elegant, century-old Windermere is not just a place to live but a multi-million-dollar asset. Dana, however, is not just surprised to be cut out of Ivan’s will but furious. The couple’s joy is marred not only by her rage but by odd goings-on in the building. At the behest of her editor and BFF, Max, Rosie focuses her next book on the Windermere’s grisly history of residents who died in murders, suicides, and bizarre accidents. Does the building bear some sort of curse—and if so, is it all in the past? As first one person in Rosie’s orbit and then another die, she becomes suspicious of people like the Windermere’s longtime doorman, Abi, and the kindly old couple across the hall, Charles and Ella Aldridge, who have lived there for decades and take much interest in Rosie’s efforts to get pregnant. And is Chad, a golden-haired charmer, as perfect as he seems? If all this reminds you of Rosemary’s Baby, it’s meant to—the book is salted with references to that classic melding of mystery and horror, and it vibrates with the same sense of escalating dread. But Unger builds her own fast-moving, creepy combination of thriller and horror in one of her best books yet.
This propulsive, haunted thriller proves that competition for New York City real estate really can be deadly.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780778333340
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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