Tag:

Suspense

Review

The Last Applicant

by Henrietta Thornton

This novel takes place in the social black hole that sucks in (very) rich New York City parents: admission to the kind of private elementary school that costs the same as college. These institutions usually seem to be named with an eye toward Beatrix Potter characters attending—St. Bernard this, country that. This one’s called Easton but is nevertheless The School to attend. That’s why admissions director Audrey Singer is only surprised by the casual tone of a begging email from a mom who didn’t realize the application pool would be capped. Sarah Price is desperate, devastated, disconsolate, not to mention a little drunk, and fears she has “completely derailed” her son, Eli’s, future. Audrey makes the mistake of allowing an exception to the rules, and that’s all it takes: Sarah now begins to stalk the gatekeeper of her dreams for Eli, with her antics growing ever more unhinged as decision day grows closer. Fans of psychological thrillers and mysteries will lap up the tense moments created by the power imbalance between Audrey and Sarah; emotional ups and downs that stem from the women’s private lives add to the roller coaster effect. As the novel is episodic, cliffhangers will thrill readers at points, and there’s a completely unpredictable ending twist. Pick up this one if you enjoyed Chandler Baker’s Cutting Teeth or Sylvie Perry’s The Hawthorne School.

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Review

The Lost Van Gogh

by Henrietta Thornton

Artist Santlofer’s previous novel, The Last Mona Lisa, saw Luke Perrone, great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, digging into his ancestor’s thievery, with Interpol also on the case. Perrone and the organization are back and chasing a painting that has long been rumored to exist: Vincent van Gogh’s last self-portrait. The work is mentioned in a letter by a friend of van Gogh’s as having been displayed at the artist’s funeral, but was it the mistake of a grieving friend? At the outset of the book, what may be the painting turns up, but greed and the less-savory machinations of the art world soon see it disappear. The book combines fiction and nonfiction, as explained by Santlofer in an absorbing interview that’s a coda to this fast-moving work. A real aspect is the sad dispersal across the world of Nazi-looted art, the tireless work by descendants of the real owners to retrieve it, and the equally tireless work of dishonest art collectors to keep it from being returned. Beauty and horror are wonderfully contrasted by Santlofer, both in the sad life of van Gogh compared to the incandescent art he produced, and in the clash of the love of art and the pursuit of wealth that takes advantage of that passion. Details of post-impressionist art and busting of myths around van Gogh (he wasn’t unknown as an artist during his life) are bonuses. A great accompaniment to this would be Mark Roskill’s Letters of Vincent van Gogh, as van Gogh’s correspondence with his brother Theo is often referenced by Santlofer.

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Review

Young Rich Widows

by Henrietta Thornton

Krystle, Meredith, Justine, and Camille are thrown together when their law-firm owning husbands, and in the case of Meredith, her girlfriend, are killed in a plane crash. The wives already knew and hated one another; the lone female partner in the firm was in the closet (it’s 1985), but is now firmly out, and Meredith joins in the animosity and puzzlement that’s freely flowing. Why were the partners on a plane back to Providence, Rhode Island from New York City, when they were supposed to be working in Providence that day? The reasons slowly become clear as the women are targeted by the town’s mafia for money that the deceased owed. Just when that danger wraps up, a twist hits the widows and readers as another…and another…perilous situation bears down on them. This book began life as an Audible original and its backbiting humor mixed with love and loathing makes it easy to see why it was such a hit and was brought to print. The authors’ note (there’s also a reading-group guide) explains that ‘90s humor-laden novels such as Married to the Mob and The First Wives Club provided inspiration; grab Young Rich Widows for some nostalgia, but it’s also just a fun romp for any thriller lover.

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Review

Extinction

by Jeff Ayers

Erebus is a resort for the extremely wealthy, and those who visit the sprawling grounds in the heart of the Colorado Rockies get to experience Earth’s distant past. Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have been able to de-extinct mammals like woolly mammoths and plant life from the Pleistocene era. A young couple pays for a camping trip in the sprawling complex and is kidnapped and killed by what appears to be a group of ruthless hunters. Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash and county sheriff James Colcord lead the investigation. As the mystery creates national headlines, Cash and Colcord meet resistance from both the team at the resort and their own supervisors. What happened to the couple is only the beginning, and the shocking truth will threaten lives and the history books. Preston creates a Michael Crichton level of thought-provoking science and thrilling intrigue while avoiding writing a Jurassic Park clone. Extinction goes beyond the simple question of whether man should play God, and with a terrific cast of characters, Preston has a guaranteed bestseller.

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Review

The Princess of Las Vegas

by Henrietta Thornton

Though there’s a year between them, sisters Crissy and Betsy Dowling are so alike they could be twins. And they don’t only resemble each other, they also look very like one Diana Spencer, the late, lamented Princess of Wales. The resemblance is so strong that Crissy performs as Di in a long-running Las Vegas residency. The casino that hosts the emotional cabaret, the Buckingham Palace, or BP, has seen better days, as has Crissy’s relationship with her lookalike sister. Crissy claims that Betsy killed their mother, the circumstances around that a mystery for most of the book. But that doesn’t stop Betsy from re-entering her sister’s life by leaving her social worker job for her new boyfriend’s cryptocurrency firm that’s setting up shop in Vegas. When the owner of the BP is found dead, and Crissy doesn’t believe the police’s finding that it’s a suicide, it starts a chain of subterfuge and violence that makes the sort-of-royals wish that what happens in Vegas didn’t involve them. Bohjalian has intriguingly veered into a much more noir path than his usual, with the darkness complimenting his typical tight plotting and absorbing family drama. This is one for fans of campy fare mixed with family shenanigans and of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan.

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Review

The Best Way to Bury Your Husband

by Brian Kenney

It’s early into lockdown in the UK, and Sally can’t take any more physical and psychological abuse from her husband—thankfully the kids are grown and out of the house. So she does the only thing she can do: she fights back, smashing him on the head with her iron skillet. But killing is the easy part. It’s disposing of the body that’s the challenge. Fortunately, Sally soon discovers that she’s not the only woman in the neighborhood with a husband rotting away in the basement, packed in cat litter (did you know? It absorbs both odors and fluids). Slowly, these women come together and create quite the self-help group, dubbed the Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club, which is tasked with disposing of four bodies…and getting away with it. As impossible as this may seem—these women aren’t exactly hooked up with organized crime—they revel in their newly created freedom, gaining the strength to take on seemingly any challenge. As Sally says, “For too long I let a small man steal my joy and potential.” What’s remarkable is how Casale—with a decade of experience in the field of male violence against women—succeeds at moving between the women’s experiences with domestic violence in the past and the dark humor of their present situation, tacitly giving us permission to laugh at times. Well-written with plenty of surprises, twists, and turns to keep readers engrossed. Pair it with Bella Mackie’s How to Kill your Family.

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Review

No One Can Know

by Brian Kenney

What starts out as a simple story of marital discord grows into something so much richer and more terrifying. Emma and her husband are in a bad way. They’re broke—he’s lost his job, a fact he has been hiding from her—and she’s pregnant, although he’s pressuring her to have an abortion. The one asset Emma has is her share in the family home. But neither Emma nor her two sisters, whom she is estranged from, have stepped foot in the house in 14 years. And for a good reason: their parents were murdered there, leaving behind a horrible, bloody mess and years of psychological damage. But Emma’s husband insists that moving back in is their only option, despite Emma’s belief that their taking up residence in the house will unseal secrets that have been kept buried for years. The story moves artfully between the past, especially the night of the murders, and the present, when Emma’s sisters show up on the scene, and law enforcement reinforces the 14-year-old belief that Emma was the murderer. We end far from where we started, in a novel that is both tremendously complex and wonderfully readable. A remarkable achievement.

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Review

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead

by Brian Kenney

This book just picks you up and catapults you into five or so hours of unrelenting suspense and anxiety. British-born Charlie came to New York City to attend a prestigious journalism school—much like Columbia’s—and just months into the program, she witnessed a horrific mass murder, quickly dubbed “Scarlet Christmas.” Since then, Charlie has built a life that largely leaves those nightmarish events behind her. Today, she’s engaged to a super-rich scion of a publishing house and is herself editor in chief of a leading magazine. But she still struggles in wanting to know her past, although even intensive work with a therapist won’t unlock the events of that fateful Christmas eve and what her role in them may have been. Then Charlie learns that a documentary film is in development—it’s the tenth anniversary of the murders—that promises to tell the whole truth. But what is the truth? Whatever it might be, Charlie is terrified of the revelations that might come tumbling out and fears that her oh-so-perfect Manhattan life will collapse on itself like a house of cards. How far will Charlie go to keep the lid on the pressure cooker? A brilliant debut that isn’t promising—it completely delivers.—

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Review

Deep Freeze

by Jeff Ayers

A bus ride becomes a nightmare when John Reiff wakes up to see the bus plunge into a freezing river, and he and several others are trapped. But that is not the end for him. He then wakes up in what appears to his confused mind to be a mix of a hospital and a laboratory. The doctors there tell him that he was cryogenically frozen due to the accident conditions, and with the experimental equipment on site, they could revive him. As John gathers his strength, he realizes that the doctors are not as forthcoming with him as they should be. He has secrets of his own, as he begins to have terrifying visions of flames mixed in with the pain from his resurrection. The truth and its ramifications will jeopardize the lives of John and the doctors who brought him back to life. Robin Cook meets Blake Crouch in this intense thriller that will appeal to fans of mysteries that feature paranoid conspiracies and a hint of science fiction. While not a cliffhanger, the ending will still have readers demanding the next book right away.

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Review

Nightwatching

by Brian Kenney

A superb novel of suspense that alternates between the terrifying present and the complex past that led up to this moment. A woman, sleeping near her two young children in a Colonial home in Massachusetts town, hears what she thinks are footsteps. Could there be anything scarier? Except this is an old house, always creaking. Perhaps it’s her imagination. Then, thanks to the nightlight, she sees a man, a huge man, slowly climbing the stairs, as “his fingers wrap the banister like white spider legs.” What should she do? A blizzard rages outside, making escape impossible. Then she remembers that the house has a tiny, hidden room, and she hustles the children and herself into it, while still worrying how they will be able to survive. Sierra keeps the adrenaline pumping, but takes breaks from the primary narrative to explore the woman’s life, from a less than happy marriage to an abusive relationship with her father-in-law to a patriarchal society that refuses to believe her. This unique, thinking-person’s thriller would be great for a book discussion, there’s so much here to unpack.

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