You can expect mystery, action, and bloodshed in this exciting thriller launched straight from the peaceful shores of Maine.
A secret past catches up with a former CIA agent, with bloody results.
Maggie Bird, age 60, is comfortably retired in Purity, Maine, where she considers herself “a small-town chicken farmer.” Out of the spy game for 16 years, she certainly doesn't want her history to be discovered. “Here on Blackberry Farm,” she says, “I've found a measure of peace, even happiness.” But a woman, possibly CIA, tracks her down and asks for Maggie’s help in locating a missing agent. Soon after, the woman’s body ends up in Maggie’s driveway. So much for an uneventful retirement. The complex plot weaves back in time to when Maggie meets her future husband, Dr. Danny Gallagher, in Bangkok. She loves him oh so much but deceives the poor man about her clandestine livelihood. But then, maybe their accidental encounter doesn’t happen by chance at all. In the present, Jo Thibodeau, Purity’s acting chief of police, is frustrated because the state police take control of the murder case. That doesn’t stop her from asking a lot of uncomfortable questions about who the hell Maggie Bird really is. Maggie is part of the Martini Club, where she socializes with a klatch of other retired CIA agents who cheerfully deflect Thibodeau’s persistent queries. “She can’t outsmart us but she can outlast us,” Maggie thinks of the chief. The story has some nice lines as it moves to London, Bangkok, and Milan before ending in Purity: “The killer must have been in bad-breath distance of him.” And Chief Thibodeau, smelling a man’s good cooking, thinks, “Too bad she didn’t have a man at home, cooking for her.” But Maggie is a pebble in Thibodeau’s shoe, and it’s easy to imagine a series with the two of them. This is a nice take on retirement—five old spooks whose bones may ache but whose minds remain sharp.
You can expect mystery, action, and bloodshed in this exciting thriller launched straight from the peaceful shores of Maine.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781662515125
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
