Another provocative and page-turning entry in the Southern noir genre.
A gripping cat-and-mouse game between a twisted White religious killer and the first Black sheriff of a small Virginia community.
Welcome to Charon County, a “teardrop-shaped peninsula” on the Chesapeake Bay with a cursed name and a blood-soaked history, where “equality’s surest foothold was found on the autopsy table.” The latest tragedy is a school shooting, terrible enough on its own but only the beginning of the fresh hell descending on Charon: Both the shooter and the lone victim are connected to a string of unthinkable abuses targeting Black children. And there is a mysterious killer still at large, his gruesome crimes steeped in Scripture and religious iconography. Recently elected Sheriff Titus Crown—organized, decisive, and conflicted between justice and vengeance—is on the case, using his FBI training to profile a madman. As in any good noir, everyone is an enemy and a suspect; Titus is hounded by bigots of all stripes: biased officers, casually racist locals, and venom-spitting White supremacists. Titus is basically the only three-dimensional character, though this isn’t a major hindrance. The novel crackles along with each new clue and obstacle; scenes and dozens of characters are sketched with efficiency. The diffuse subjects of Titus’ wrath are treated solemnly if unsubtly—institutional Christianity in particular takes it in the teeth. Tight pacing mostly keeps the contrivances at bay, though there may be the occasional eye roll at Titus’ pithy True Detective–style platitudes about how broken the world is. Nevertheless, readers will cheer at Titus’ brutal screeds against those who push him past the point of patience. “Evil is rarely complicated,” Titus explains. “It’s just fucking bold.” Cosby’s previous works, Blacktop Wasteland (2020) and Razorblade Tears (2021), have both been optioned for film adaptations, and his latest seems destined for the same treatment.
Another provocative and page-turning entry in the Southern noir genre.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781250831910
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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