A great, gravely unsettling novel that welcomes repeated readings.
Smacking her abusive, low-life husband in the head with a cast-iron pan, a young Brooklyn mom sets off a chain of events that threatens her and her family, including her young son.
Risa Taverna is the essence of well-behaved (“she’s lived all tightened up”). But when her drunk husband, Sav, points a gun at her; her 8-month-old son, Fab; and her close sister, Giulia, she takes action. Tragically, Sav hits his head on a table on the way down and dies. With the help of Fab’s “Uncle Chooch,” who has long pined after Risa, the desperate sisters bury the body in upstate New York and tell everyone in their Italian neighborhood of Gravesend that Sav ran off to parts unknown. Everyone except Fab, who barely speaks, manages to lead a normal-ish life until years later when Sav’s wretched older brother, Roberto, shows up questioning Risa’s story (he will regret doing so). Years later, Father Tim, a young priest with money problems, tries to extort money from Risa to keep him from spreading rumors about Sav that he heard in a bar. And in the final section of this flowing epic, Fab, now an angry, delinquent teenager with gambling debts, goes off in search of the father he barely knew but is fast turning into. An established noir master, Boyle outdoes himself in crafting a novel of deep dimensions marked by intergenerational trauma, family strife, and failed religion (“the cardboard taste of a million communion wafers remained in his mouth”). It’s a page-turning performance with unforgettable scenes, including a nearly unbearable one in which Risa can’t help serving the blackmailing priest warmed up lasagna even as he’s threatening her. The names of the characters, including Jane the Stain, All Bad Allie, and Cyclone Archie, are worth the price of admission.
A great, gravely unsettling novel that welcomes repeated readings.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781641296403
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 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
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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