Hart brings the heart in this entertaining tale of redemption, sacrifice, and found family.
Hitmen who have forsworn murder plan to infiltrate a black-site prison to rescue one of their own.
Violence, like drugs, is addictive; hence, Assassins Anonymous. Every Tuesday, men and women looking “to stop killing and help others to achieve the same” meet at a deconsecrated church on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After six months of listening, Astrid—former hitter for a clandestine deep-state organization dubbed the Agency—is finally ready to share her story when she’s abducted en route. Astrid’s sponsor, Mark—another Agency hitter—starts calling her daily, leaving encouraging voicemails that she never answers. Mark is tempted give up when Astrid’s phone is disconnected, but then her favorite kind of pizza gets delivered mid-meeting. Mark and former black ops mercenary Booker work their contacts to trace the order’s origins to a restricted island off Brazil’s coast that’s covered in poisonous snakes. Correctly assuming the remote locale also houses an off-book detention center at which Astrid is being held, the men begin organizing a nonlethal extraction—a feat that proves easier said than done. Meanwhile, though Astrid doesn’t know what data Dr. Felix Vogt keeps medicating her to retrieve, she’s certain it’ll be used for harm. To escape, she’ll need assistance, but as her potential accomplices are all notorious fellow detainees, they are just as likely to kill her instead. Hart’s cheeky, swiftly paced present-tense narration alternates between Mark’s and Astrid’s first-person perspectives, Astrid’s sections incorporating flashbacks that inform both her character and her current predicament. Elements of the action-packed plot feel propped up by either convenience or contrivance, and Vogt is a moustache-twirling Bond villain, but on balance, the stakes are human, the worldbuilding is fun, and the vibrant supporting cast is stocked with spinoff-worthy personalities.
Hart brings the heart in this entertaining tale of redemption, sacrifice, and found family.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780593717424
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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
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
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