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
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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