Tag:

Suspense

Review

Like Mother, Like Daughter

by Jeff Ayers

Cleo, a student at NYU, has a tumultuous relationship with her mother, and that hatred gets tested in McCreight’s latest domestic thriller. Cleo’s mom, Kat, begs her to come for dinner, and Cleo reluctantly agrees. Arriving late, she finds food burning in the oven and on the stovetop and blood on a shoe, but no Kat. What happened to her mom? As she searches for answers from her father and friends, she quickly learns that everyone has secrets, and the mom she wanted to avoid was not the woman she thought. The story jumps between Cleo trying to find the truth and Kat, from two weeks before her disappearance, trying desperately to hide from her past and keep Cleo from discovering everything. Even the most jaded readers will not anticipate all the surprises here. McCreight, who knows how to keep the pages turning, has become one of the best in the psychological thriller genre. She has another bestseller on her hands.

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Review

Red River Road

by Brian Kenney

Do you love books that take you to new places, especially if it’s unlikely you will ever visit them in person? Me too. And Downes’s thriller does exactly that, bringing us to the dramatic coastal highways of Western Australia and setting us down among the “vanlifers,” who are exploring the coast while living out of their souped-up vehicles. But this isn’t a Fodor’s Travel Guide. We’re following Katy Sweeney, who’s hit the road in hopes of finding her sister, Phoebe, a sort of solo travel influencer, who disappeared a year ago. The case has grown cold and the cops have all but given up when Katy meets Beth, another young woman who has her own reasons for disappearing into the anonymous van world, a world often hostile to women. The two pair up—Beth is pretty destitute—and use Phoebe’s social-media posts to retrace her steps along the coast. Documenting a true road trip from hell, this fast-moving suspense novel eventually arrives at a resolution that is both terrifying and shocking, turning everything we have come to believe inside out and upside down.

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Review

The Out-of-Town Lawyer

by Henrietta Thornton

This legal thriller’s title is reminiscent of The Lincoln Lawyer, and Rotstein’s ace storytelling will also bring vintage Grisham to mind. The lead character, Elvis Henderson, even lives out of a vehicle—the camper van that he parks outside the run-down motel where his coworker, Margaret Booth, stays while they defend the case that has Alabama rapt. Destiny Grace Harper is accused of murdering her twin babies, but not by any action she took. She didn’t save them because her strict Christian church doesn’t believe in medical treatment. When her babies were discovered to have a lethal condition in utero, one that could be reversed with a simple surgery, Destiny Grace ran away rather than succumb to the court-ordered procedure. Now Elvis is up against pro-life locals, his client’s refusal to cooperate in her own defense, and a judge that’s just as stubborn. Both his wily arguments and the prosecutors vigorous rebuttals are spellbinding enough, but the story also digs into the rot that’s sometimes behind nice-family facades and small-town politeness. With James Patterson a former co-author of Rotstein’s (in The Family Lawyer), this has a ready-made audience, but newcomers to Rotstein will soon want more too.

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Review

A Calamity of Souls

by Jeff Ayers

In a small Virginia town in 1968, a Black man named Jerome works for an elderly white couple. On Friday, when he expects to get his weekly salary, he walks into their house and finds their dead bodies. The police arrive and accuse him of resisting arrest and beat him. In jail with a head wound and bruises, the innocent man has already been convicted. A white lawyer named Jack Lee takes the case and immediately finds himself in the crosshairs of hate. Working with a female Black lawyer from Chicago, Jack struggles for justice in a town and environment where the verdict is already a foregone conclusion, and there is no lifeline for him or the case. Baldacci is one of the great storytellers, and he channels John Grisham in this compelling and harsh story that explores racism, the criminal justice system, and family dynamics. Half legal thriller and half an examination of the South at one of its most tumultuous times, this will be yet another bestseller for Baldacci and a novel destined for book club discussions.

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Review

The Recruiter

by Jeff Ayers

Rick Carter, not his real name, walked away from his family ten years ago to keep them safe from the ramifications of his job. He is the best of the best when it comes to recruiting others to handle jobs notorious criminals want dealt with. Professional assassinations, smuggling, or dealing with trafficking issues while keeping those in the driver’s seat out of the spotlight? Call Rick. But even with his unscrupulous methods, Rick has a moral code. When he’s forced to find killers to eliminate a law-enforcement task force, he quickly learns that there is more at play than he realized, and now his family and entire criminal empire are about to end horribly. Podolski crafts a skillful and page-turning action thriller that does not let up for a second. Rick and his telling of the story make someone completely unlikeable into one whom the reader can root for to succeed. It’s hard to create empathetic characters when you build a world of criminals, but Podolski nails it. This looks like the start of a series, and the second one cannot come fast enough.

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Review

Return to Blood

by Willy Williams

Following his acclaimed debut, Better the Blood, Michael Bennett’s compelling sophomore outing in his crime series starring Māori detective Hana Westerman proves the New Zealand screenwriter and author is no one-hit wonder as a mystery writer. In the wake of the traumatic events recounted in the first book, Hana has resigned from the Auckland CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) and returned to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she helps her father, Eru, prepare local Māori teens to get their driver’s licenses. But the calm Hana is trying to rebuild is shattered when her 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers the skeleton of a young woman in the sand dunes. Investigators suspect the bones may be those of Kiri Thomas, a Māori teenager who disappeared four years earlier. Although Hana is no longer in the police force, she begins to probe the possibility that Kiri’s death may be connected to the 21-year-old unsolved murder of Paige Meadows, whose body was found in the same dunes. Likewise, Addison becomes obsessed with Kiri’s fate, threatening her friendship with her non-binary flatmate and musical partner, Plus 1. In a nod to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the storyline is interspersed with the dead Kiri’s haunting first-person narrative. Bennett, who is Māori, immerses readers deeper into Māori culture and traditions as he expands on Hana’s loving relationship with her father and tense interactions with her chilly second cousin, Eyes. An atmospheric thriller that will have readers booking flights to New Zealand. Bennett is adapting Better the Blood into a six-part TV series for Taika Waititi’s production company.

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Review

The Recruiter

by Jeff Ayers

Rick Carter, not his real name, walked away from his family ten years ago to keep them safe from the ramifications of his job. He is the best of the best when it comes to recruiting others to handle jobs notorious criminals want dealt with. Professional assassinations, smuggling, or dealing with trafficking issues while keeping those in the driver’s seat out of the spotlight? Call Rick. But even with his unscrupulous methods, Rick has a moral code. When he’s forced to find killers to eliminate a law-enforcement task force, he quickly learns that there is more at play than he realized, and now his family and entire criminal empire are about to end horribly. Podolski crafts a skillful and page-turning action thriller that does not let up for a second. Rick and his telling of the story make someone completely unlikeable into one whom the reader can root for to succeed. It’s hard to create empathetic characters when you build a world of criminals, but Podolski nails it. This looks like the start of a series, and the second one cannot come fast enough

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Review

Love Letters to a Serial Killer

by Henrietta Thornton and Brian Kenney

Deeply disturbing pals up with darkly comic to create one heck of a morbid ride. Thirty-something Hannah is a little lost. Her work in a non-profit in Minneapolis is as meaningless as her occasional hook-ups with self-centered guys who only want one thing. The light of her life? True crime, specifically the unfolding story of a murderer in Atlanta who has killed four women and is quickly identified as William, a good-looking lawyer. From combing the true-crime forums by night and the news articles by day, Hannah’s interest in William blossoms until she takes the next step: she writes to him. Thus begins a correspondence that works its way from hatred to love, as all the while her life crumbles around her. By the time the trial is announced, Hannah has nothing to stop her from driving to Georgia, spending weeks observing the proceedings, and hanging out with the other true-crime weirdos (too judgy? I don’t think so). But as in all good crime books, nothing is as it seems, and the truth sends Hannah—and the reader—spinning in a completely surprising direction.

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Review

I Will Ruin You

by Jeff Ayers

Richard Boyle teaches 11th-grade English, and during class one morning, he looks out his window and sees a former student walking toward the entrance with a bomb strapped to his chest. He takes matters into his own hands and ends up confronting the bomber, who wants to see three specific individuals so he can complete his mission. Richard ends up saving everyone, but the bomber trips and blows himself up. Now a hero, Richard learns that his actions have made some people angry, including the bomber’s parents and a blackmailer with dirt on Richard, though he has no idea what that might be. In his case, good deeds are punished. To reveal any more of the story would spoil some neat surprises. Barclay immediately turns up the intense narrative and creates a page-turner that could quickly turn toward uncomfortable territory due to its subject matter, but since he is a master, he avoids that realm completely. Instead, we have a psychological and paranoid thriller that fires on all cylinders.

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Review

If Something Happens To Me

by Jeff Ayers

A trip to lover’s lane ruins lives in Finlay’s latest thriller. Ryan Richardson was with his girlfriend, Ali, when they were attacked. He receives a blow to the head and is thrown out of the car while Ali screams and vanishes along with the vehicle. Five years later, Ryan has changed his name to escape the constant pressure of suspicion in Ali’s death. Abroad, attending law school, he learns that the car has been found in a lake, and inside were two dead men and an envelope with the words, “If something happens to me” written on it. Inside are a series of numbers. Is it a code to reveal the truth about that night? Ryan seeks closure, but trying to get the answers he seeks ends could put him in the crosshairs of a killer. The twists are nonstop, and the story falls into surprising territory. Finlay’s name on the cover guarantees a great read, and this one will end up on many best-of-the-year lists.

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