A gripping crime story filled with complex ideas and sharp characters.
A widowed police detective investigates a string of murders in this thriller that explores quantum physics.
Eddie Vaugner is a homicide detective and amputee who moves with crutches when he isn’t wearing his state-of-the-art, below-the-knee prosthesis. He lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska, with his mother, who has moved in to help him care for his 11-year-old son, who had leukemia but is now in remission. Eddie is assigned to the murder depicted in the opening chapter, a scene that hints at the metaphysical layers of the writing to come as the slain priest is sent “down a dark vortex at impossible speed,” arriving before a mythical beast who rips him in half. The killer is Dr. Grayson Lange, a highly skilled surgeon who slips away undetected. Artwohl follows both characters in parallel tracks—the detective and the killer he’s trying to find—while slowly broadening the players who surround them. Eddie’s son is gifted and, since his initial bout with leukemia, increasingly drawn to questions about God and the meaning of life, including a preoccupation with quantum entanglement—how molecules are linked in ways that defy people’s everyday understanding of space and time. Eddie himself is increasingly drawn to the new medical examiner, Rebecca Raven, and their relationship develops as they continue to work on the case. This initial murder investigation is complicated by another high-profile homicide: the assassination of Dr. Jack Peplow, a scholar meant to deliver a speech about the separation of church and state. Peplow was killed, according to his family, by a fanatical religious organization trying to rewrite the Constitution “to make the United States the mecca of modern Protestant Christianity.” The two cases and the parallel storylines begin to converge in a fast-paced final third.
Although the story builds momentum toward its thrilling finale, there are several subplots that take a while to fully develop or seem extraneous, like Becca’s stalking ex-boyfriend. In creating multiple characters given to info-dumping—Becca, Lange, and Eddie’s son are all extraordinarily smart—the novel is often riddled with streams of specifics like “Palladium’s 4d orbitals overlap and interact with gold’s 5d orbitals, creating hybrid molecular orbitals. This hybridization increases the energy gap between gold’s 5d and 6s orbitals.” This extends to the prose itself, which is often fleet when not similarly describing exact details, like Lange’s expert climbing: “Using Black Diamond Turbo Express ice screws, he created two eight-inch-deep ice holes about a foot apart, oriented at 45-degree angles to each other, creating a V-shaped vertical passage.” Artwohl’s take on modern megachurches is satirical yet somewhat chilling, as in his scene at the American Salvation megachurch. That house of worship uses generative artificial intelligence to present the Founding Fathers calling out the “liberal atheists” who try to impose the separation of church and state in modern America. If the mixture of police procedural, thriller, and questions about the nature of God and the physics that govern Earth does not always cohere, it is still a worthwhile ride.
A gripping crime story filled with complex ideas and sharp characters.Pub Date: July 24, 2025
ISBN: 9798992675115
Page Count: 462
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© 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.
