A captivating crime tale that delivers a welcome new sleuth with writing chops.
In this novel, a Kent State–like National Guard shooting plunges a compromised soldier/journalist into a deadly web of conspiracy and cover-ups.
The year is 1970. Vietnam veteran Wat Tyler has returned home under a shadow of controversy. The word is that he “developed a mile-wide yellow streak and withdrew your Green Berets in an act of gross cowardice that exposed a whole infantry company to enemy fire and cost the lives of two dozen of our boys.” He has returned to his position as a reporter for the New York Examiner under city editor Maggie Call, his adoptive mom and mentor. Maggie rescued the former teenage delinquent, who never graduated from high school, from the Brooklyn streets and taught him his trade. He enlists in the National Guard, where his presence is decidedly not welcome by Col. Philip Sheridan Riley. “You’re not a captain” anymore, “and you’re not a hero,” Riley thunders during their first meeting. Tyler is investigating a recent anti-war protest shooting on the Ramskill University campus, which came just three days after the National Guard killed four students at Kent State. The Ramskill shooting took the lives of two professors and a congresswoman’s son, and it was Riley who deployed more than 1,200 guardsmen that day. The dozen soldiers involved in the shooting belonged to the same outfit that Tyler is joining. Chadwick launches his Wat Tyler crime trilogy with this auspicious procedural that deftly establishes the period with evocative references (including the legendary rock palace the Fillmore). Tyler is a compelling figure with a fraught backstory on which to build a series. He is a proficient journalist, but his military background affords him an action hero’s physicality, as when he comes to the aid of a homeless man being harassed by street punks. Chadwick, an award-winning journalist, refreshingly eschews the hard-boiled tone, but some dialogue is flat (“yeller-belly”), and the “talking killer” trope is trotted out. Still, the author knows his way around telling a conspiracy story, even one as convoluted (albeit covert) as this one.
A captivating crime tale that delivers a welcome new sleuth with writing chops.Pub Date: June 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1803136387
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Matador
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
