A remarkably original achievement.
In D’Stair’s novel, a gruesome murder is committed in famous pianist Glenn Gould’s hotel room, compelling him to defend his innocence.
Glenn Gould wakes up in a hotel room he has no memory of checking into, alarmingly separated from the potpourri of pills that permit him to navigate life. The scene he discovers in his room is as bizarre as it is macabre—a woman has been hacked to death with a hatchet, and a record player that is not his own is playing a recording of him (he doesn’t own that either) performing the Goldberg Variations on repeat. Stuffed in the victim’s mouth is a crumpled piece of paper on which is printed a hostile review of one of his performances, written by the critic Paul Henry Lang. Later, Gould learns the dead woman is a housekeeper who thought ill of him. Detective Inspector Dziurzynski interviews Gould and points out plainly how incriminating the scene is. Gould protests he is not only innocent but bewildered, lost in a “placid, medicinal haze,” his “nervous system in a state of fray”; the musician’s relentlessly neurotic condition is vividly and humorously depicted by the author in this enchantingly peculiar novel. Lang turns up dead next—he is killed within a day of the housekeeper’s demise—but Gould insists, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that his hands are clean. The possibilities are many; maybe Gould is being framed? Of course, if he is not the killer, surely his life is in grave danger. As Dziurzynski notes: “If what I believe is correct, Mister Gould, there is someone very dangerous standing behind you, in the dark, breathing down your neck. They’ve proven themselves not only vicious, but calculating. Patient. In one way or another, however unwittingly, you are their link to whichever macabre impulse fuels this blood-thirsty endeavor.”
D’Stair has composed a grippingly deconstructed version of the classic crime drama—not only is it never entirely obvious who the killer is, it’s never certain Gould can rule himself out. It might even be the case there is another Glenn Gould somewhere, a doppelgänger of sorts. The reader will never solve the crime or predict the novel’s defiantly strange ending—that is a decisive neatness the author seems intent on undermining. D’Stair paints a dizzying picture that is deliciously complex; apparently, there is nothing as philosophically intractable as murder. As Dziurzynski declaims: “Murder is gonna be the most convoluted kerfuffle imaginable. Not even imaginable! A happenstance so outside typical human experience the truth of any instance would sound farcical if laid out by barristers to jury-folk.” The dialogue between Dziurzynski and Gould can be a touch cute—snappy one-liners are exchanged with a manufactured alacrity and a contrived rhetorical refinement. But even this literary hyperbole seems appropriate if understood as an ironic comment on the detective genre, a reinvention of a style that must be as much commandeered as it is renovated. Either way, the prose is never a fatal distraction, and one can’t help but be fascinated by Gould’s compelling amalgam of genius and mental disability. This is a thrillingly unconventional novel, one that successfully reinvents an old literary convention from the inside.
A remarkably original achievement.Pub Date: March 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798348359539
Page Count: 508
Publisher: Late Marriage Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
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