This enthralling book is a mystery, a thriller, and an exploration of how trust—or the lack of it—can color relationships.
Having just moved to London with her partner, a woman seeks to discover the truth behind the murder/suicide of her home's previous occupants.
Alice is a 35-year-old freelance translator who has recently uprooted herself from her cottage in Harlestone and moved to London to live full time with Leo, her long-distance partner of a year and half. They were previously able to see each other only on weekends, and this move is supposed to be the start of the rest of their lives. Upon moving into The Circle—as their gated cul-de-sac of 12 houses is called—things just seem a little off, and Leo doesn’t want Alice getting involved with the neighbors or inviting them over. But invite them she does, and Maria and Tim, Tamsin and Connor, Eve and Will, and Cara and Paul all accept her invitation on the neighborhood group chat to join her and Leo for drinks in their garden. But when Alice discovers that an uninvited guest—a man she'd thought was Tim—has shown up and then disappeared without anyone else seeing him, her hackles are raised. And then she discovers that her home's previous occupant—Nina, a therapist with the same name as her own beloved dead sister—was brutally murdered in the house and that Nina’s husband, Oliver, killed himself when he was arrested for the crime. Alice is determined to get to the bottom of the murder and discover just what her neighbors in The Circle are hiding. Author Paris has done a masterful job of upping the creep factor in this volume, hinting at the secrets that everyone is hiding and peeling back, layer by layer, the story of what happened to Nina and Oliver as Alice goes through her day-to-day life and struggles to make new friends and deal with her suspicions. As in her other books, Paris has created complex, flawed characters who grapple with death, obsessions, and fear as they try to live their lives.
This enthralling book is a mystery, a thriller, and an exploration of how trust—or the lack of it—can color relationships.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2502-7412-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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
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