HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE, entertaining debut novel/thriller from veteran Actor Jon Lindstrom

HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE
JON LINDSTROM
Crooked Lane Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From 4-time Emmy-nominated actor Jon Lindstrom of General Hospital, Bosch, and True Detective fame, comes a gripping debut thriller.

Set in the dark underbelly of the LA film industry, Hollywood Hustle is the perfect read for fans of Alex Finlay and Jeffrey Deaver.

Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside—traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win’s troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his “movie money” for her safe return. But what they don’t know is…his movie money is long gone.

Unable to go to the police for fear the kidnappers will make good on their promise to kill his daughter, Winston turns to two close friends—a legendary Hollywood stuntman and a disgraced former LAPD detective.

There’s no easy way out for Winston or his daughter—the gang is violent and willing to do anything to get the money they’re after, and Winston begins to realize that to get his daughter back, he’ll have to beat the kidnappers at their own game.

This propulsive and tense thriller will transport readers to the seedier side of LA, depicted in bold prose by a Hollywood insider.

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My Review: Thrillers starring grandfathers are uncommon. Grandfathers aren't. The fact we have a man who failed on multiple axes in his life rising to the challenge that, in part, stems from those failures feels to me both just and condign.

I do love a redemption arc. This one's a doozy.

The key to a solid, entertaining thriller, then, is turned: I'm invested in the set-up and the characters. I care about the stakes...a child's life is precious to a father, doubly so to a grandfather, and these are real relatable emotional states for Winston to occupy.

The next hurdle for a thriller to make a good impact, as opposed to a stinky splat, on me is the storytelling. The voice of the PoV character, or the use of an omniscient narrator; the pacing, the setting's depth, the blend of familiar and novel elements in this; and crucially the organization...how long are the paragraphs? the chapters?...all must reinforce each other for the trick of suspension of disbelief to work. Someone writing sentences as long as mine isn't writing a thriller, they're writing a mystery. Happily, Author Lindstrom is the veteran of many scripts read and enacted, so he grasps with a sureness born of experience the need for dialogue to serve a purpose or be left on the cutting-room floor.

I am unsurprised therefore to give him full marks on the craft of writing dialogue. I take away a star, paradoxically, for not listening to the effect of all the swearing. There are a few people reading this who are howling with laughter at my statement. I'm "foul-mouthed" as many a pursey-lipped prude has told me over the years.

Reinforcing the horror trope "the call is coming from inside the house."

If *I* noticed this facet of the dialogue, many others did too, and either checked out or gave up and Pearl-Ruled the book.

A thing I felt was...underdeveloped? glossed over? not explored to the extent needed to justify its centrality?...was the pervasive illicit-drug use. Winston passed the curse of addiction to his child. That is the igniting incident of the entire plot. I expect that to be more of a topic of either reflection or regret rather than a background taken for granted. If a character's failings are the reason they are in enough hot water to justify a thriller, it feels careless for the author not to offer more than passing acknowledgment of that reality.

While I know Author Lindsrom has portrayed a LOT of flawed characters in his acting career, that shows in this case. Scripts do not ever have room for exploration comparable to that in a novel, so I'm observing the need for a good storyteller to shift gears, not develop a missing skill.

I really hope this is not the last novel I'll read from Author Lindstrom. I liked Winston, and wouldn't pass up a second book featuring him. I think the thriller world can use some older men doing their best to offer amends for past wrongs, errors, and omissions.

TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON, latest thriller from Pavone delivers a little too much

TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON
CHRIS PAVONE
MCD Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: You think you know a person . . .

Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone—no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong.

She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new—much younger—husband?

The clock is ticking. Ariel is increasingly frustrated and desperate, running out of time, and the one person in the world who can help is the one person she least wants to ask.

With sparkling prose and razor-sharp insights, bestselling author Chris Pavone delivers a stunning and sophisticated international thriller that will linger long after the surprising final page.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Unreliable narrator tells unbelievable story with murky stakes attached to its outcome. And here I am giving it four stars.

Doesn't make sense, does it. Or does it....

What Author Pavone does is set the reader up for something from the get-go. Unlike many thriller writers, that "something" isn't glaringly obvious. What sets this thriller in motion is an older woman married to a handsome younger man. Who ups and disappears from their hotel room on an international trip.

Prepare the violins, right? Welllll...yes but not for her, as you'll see. Her fear at this catastrophe seems...performative...to the authorities who look at her late-middle-aged self, see the muffin she's so recently married, and all but say out loud, "well, little lady, what exactly can you expect? Men do stray...and he's been gone less than a day. Give him time to sober up and pay the, um, lady. He'll be back." But she's not having it.

Why is she not having it? It does, after all, make a grim kind of sense. Before their short marriage, she didn't know her husband well...he's a relative stranger, so why is it she's carrying on so?

Wheels within wheels, and here we are rollin' along beside Ariel...has that name, one the lady chose for herself, made its real force felt in you yet?...as the story's necessary force carries us along, stopping for some info-dumpy conversations/monologues/set pieces. It's not like there's any point where Author Pavone sticks it to us, the sad little readers wondering what the living hell possessed this hard-edged survivor to do something so stupid as this mishegas results from. And both parties are hard-edged survivors. So what's the situation underlying the story? It's a thriller! You *know* there is one.

The phrase "ripped-from-the-headlines" is a cliche to my generation of Movie of the Week veterans. It got a bad name for shoddy, indifferent storytelling. But it never needed to be that way, did it. What happens that makes the newspapers is a joyous rioting street party of story plots. Read this one and find out what the right dance partner can give.

I can't give the book all five stars because, despite the clarity of storytelling purpose that snaps into focus as the ending twists us up, there is a prolixity of speechifyin' that really grated on me. (I'm lookin' at you, Griffiths.) And the Epilogue is just a shade over the top I most wanted not to go over. But the story is a deeply, involvingly, satisfyingly real one, and I encourage y'all to read it.

DEAD OF WINTER, chilling in more than one way, plus tension and puzzles to think through

DEAD OF WINTER
DARCY COATES
Poisoned Pen Press
$15.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From bestselling author Darcy Coates comes Dead of Winter, a remote cabin in the snowy wilderness thriller that will teach you to trust no one. There are eight strangers. One killer. Nowhere left to run.

When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she's hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they'll be safe as they wait out the storm.

She couldn't be more wrong.

Deep in the night, their tour guide goes missing...only to be discovered the following morning, his severed head impaled on a tree outside the cabin. Terrified, and completely isolated by the storm, Christa finds herself trapped with eight total strangers. One of them kills for sport...and they're far from finished. As the storm grows more dangerous and the number of survivors dwindles one by one, Christa must decide who she can trust before this frozen mountain becomes her tomb.

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    If you need trigger warnings, this is not the read for you.

My Review: What you need to know is that this author's already famous, and has done this work for over twenty books now. This means there are Expectations from Darcy Coates readers, plus the hook is baited with care and attention to the creation of more Darcy Coates readers. This effort is successful, and pays off. The sentences flow past you, making perhaps only a modest impression separately. The cumulative effect, like the river's flow of my metaphor, is powerful and impressive. I'm not all that impressed with the author's effort until I step back and consider what the journey I've been on has left me to feel and think about.

There are always, always comparisons of "stranded together, death stalks them" stories to And Then There Were None. Inevitable; unfair. The standard-setter of the subgenre will usually win because that's the nature of literary analysis. When one is held up to a known standard, one is seldom going to be the one coming out on top in the comparisons. So let's get this out of the way: Darcy Coates isn't Dame Agatha. And you know what? That's just fine with me. I enjoy the set-up enough to get the story on its terms, not my literary snobby standards.

One of those standards is mysteries don't reveal the gore; thrillers do. Author Coates, then, delivers a thriller. Given a lot of her work is horror, that isn't in any way out of character. Also notable is the truism that thriller characters live to die, and more often than not aren't given a lot of development before or after their deaths. Another tick in the thriller column.

The freak-storm trope always decreases my pleasure in a mystery/thriller. If it was unexpected, how did the miscreant plan and execute (!) all these elaborate endings? How were these people, all with vile secrets that meant I was utterly indifferent to their murders (in a couple cases, actively pleased they'd died horribly), assembled with the assurance that they'd be incommunicado? That was always the flaw in my own pleasure when reading this particular set-up by anyone. It means I've literally never rated one of these reads above four stars.

Looking above, you'll see all four of those stars. I loved the experience of being chilled to the bone by Author Coates's wintertime evocation. I was, ironically, delighted with the murderer's choices of victims. The issue for me was there were too many of them for the sketchy characterizations to keep me interested in their fates. Being inside Christa's head made the technique inevitable. The use of very short chapters suits the need to keep the story moving but ultimately make that action, propulsive as it is, feel more repetitive than it should in order to propel the story to greater-than-the source heights. The tragedies, as I've said above, seem less effective as character establishing mechanisms than as justifications for the brutality inflicted on these rotters because there isn't the scope to do more than report them.

Cavils like these aside, I join the chorus of Goodreads readers wondering where the hell the movie is—I can already see it, done by (say) Guy Ritchie...it's got his blend of violence and moral ambiguity and visual power.

Do I know anyone who knows him? Give him a copy!

A Veterans' Day Review of a Thriller By A Veteran 11 November 2013

STRIKE FROM THE DEEP
BOB BRANCO
Maine Authors Publishing
$17.95 trade paper, available now
$4.99 Kindle edition

In honor of Veterans' Day, a thriller by a US Navy Veteran...4-star reviewed!

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Modern-day Somali pirates have been capturing merchant ships for ransom. Suddenly, in a move that rattles the world's economies, giant oil and liquid natural gas tankers are mysteriously taken off Arabia and Africa, far out at sea in the darkness of night. Held for record ransom demands, these ships are taken to strange new pirate hideouts along the North coast of Somalia. When pirates fire on the responding international task force ships and aircraft, the world watches as an entirely new type of war at sea begins.

I requested a copy of this title from the author. He provided it understanding my review would appear here.

My Review: Tom Clancy's death in October 2013 opened the field for military thriller writers for the second time in his career. After he published The Hunt for Red October in 1984, military thrillers were once again on the readerly radar of many many men. Clancy dominated the field he had opened for almost thirty years.

Rest in peace, Mr. Clancy. Your successors are lining up to entertain the men, women, and boys of the world with tense, exciting, well-wrought storylines of high-stakes chases, maneuvers, and back-stage politicking. Here's one of the first to come out of the gate, and it's a strong contender for a place on the military thriller reader's Holiday present list.

Don't kid yourself...it's a novel, but it's not a farrago or a fanciful conceit. Branco took a very real and worsening concern for the shipping industry, piracy based in the lawless failed state of Somalia, and ratcheted up the stakes. I suspect it's only a matter of time before the book is seen as predictive instead of entertaining. If, that is, the events haven't already played out like this, only with more silencing oil poured over them.

When Jason Stewart, commanding the USS Farragut, is ordered to look into the status of a supertanker full of liquified natural gas en route from Nigeria to Mumbai, the plot kicks into high gear and doesn't stop. Alternating sections of the story are told from the major points of view...the pirates, the motivating malefactors, the loyal henchrats...seldom staying with us long enough for the reader to become inured to the action.

Back and forth, cat and mouse, and all told in a spare, clipped narrative voice that feels more like it's overheard than written for an audience, there's just barely time to get in the swing of Lt. (jg) Christine Johnson's duty shift before we're aboard a pirated vessel and experiencing the terror of a crewman about to die, and before that becomes squicky we're in a plush Moscow office listening to a very, very ruthless and unpleasant man give orders that appall the reader who rejects Ayn Rand as a moral guide.

Navy veteran Branco can be relied on for accuracy, and savvy world citizen Branco can be relied on to "get" the power dynamics of world-straddling military forces both pro and con. There is not a jot of doubt about who is doing wrong here, but there is not a hint of lazy, demonizing anticharacterization at work either. Everyone here has a motivation for acting in a particular way, and it's never simplistic.

I am obligated by my inner elitist to mention the intensely annoying lapses in observing the conventions of standard punctuation (e.g., when mentioning a city, one must use the formula "City Name, State Name," and not "City Name, State Name" and then bang on with the sentence!), and I for one do not welcome sentence fragments or dependent clauses plopped in my dialogue without commas to set them off, and don't even get me started on the series or Oxford comma so blithely ignored throughout...but overall, as witness my rating, not even these cavils led me to stop reading (a frequent occurrence, even in well-told stories) or to smack the author upside the head with a single-star rating (less frequent occurrence, as it's more or less the nuclear option when a story is poorly told).

I liked the story. I was excited to see what happened next. I'd say that any reader who laments the loss of Tom Clancy's military thriller creation machine should celebrate this Veteran's Day by ordering a copy of Bob Branco's book and sinking into a satisfied haze of acronyms and action.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

56 DAYS, a super-suspenseful story that wins on every level

56 DAYS
CATHERINE RYAN HOWARD
Blackstone Publishing
$19.99 hardcover, available now

NOW $1.99 ON KINDLE! (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 4.5* of five

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 2021 BEST BOOK FOR ADULTS RECOMMENDATION!

The Publisher Says: No one knew they'd moved in together. Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who - and what - he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime?

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANK YOU, KIND ELF!

My Review: There’s always room for the thriller genre to expand. It’s been a generation since gay characters were allowed to live past the ending, as mysteries made their peace with us in the Brandstetter books; we’ve been promoted to sleuths! It’s been a generation, too, since heroines were normalized in the hardboiled end of the genre, with Sue Grafton’s damaged and flawless Kinsey Milhone.

But what hasn’t happened all that often, and what still feels surprising and fresh and fun to read, is the moral grayness of female thriller leads. They’ve been haunted; they’ve been vengeful; but they’ve either Done Wrong and Suffered, or Been Victims and Suffered. Isn’t that tedious? Isn’t that unrealistic? I know actual women, I know they’re (mostly!) neither Supervillainesses without a shred of conscience or Saintly Martyrs. They’re messy, muddleheaded people. They fuck up, they attempt to atone for it, they make awful mistakes and terrible decisions. They are, in other words, just...people.

Fiction hasn’t adjusted to the reality of women’s ordinariness. But Catherine Ryan Howard has.

Ciara Murphy is an ordinary, plain-old-folks, woman. She is about to turn herself into a pretzel of anxiety when we meet her because an impossibly handsome man has just Noticed Her and she isn’t able to believe that he’s actually behaving like a decent guy who’s just seen someone he wants to get to know better. That doesn’t happen between Adonis-like men called something as elegant as Oliver Kennedy and pleasantly plain lasses like her. Happen, however, it does:

And he’s so attractive that she knows instantly the world he lives in is not the same one in which she does, that he can’t possibly experience it the same way. A face like that affords a different kind of existence, one in which you arrive into every situation with some degree of preapproval. But you don’t know it, don’t reavlize that you’re being ushered into the priority lane of life every single day.

She wonders what that does to a person.

Nothing good, Ciara. Nothing good, and sometimes quite terrible things. As we’re all aware, there is male privilege and there is nothing good that comes from the possession of that plus good looks plus...though this is Ireland, and therefore the whitest of the white-people countries...white privilege. But Ciara’s white, too, and it’s time to face up to this book’s blind spot. Everyone in this story is a privileged and spoiled First Worlder having seriously First-World problems.

She keeps a screenshot on her phone of a quote by, supposedly, Abraham Lincoln: Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want the most. Maybe that’s true, but discipline has never been her problem. It’s fear she struggles with. She thinks courage might be choosing between what you want now and what you want most, because what she wants now is to walk away, to shut this down, to close the door.

That said, we move on. And it’s where we move on to that makes 56 Days a deeply compelling, fully absorbing, surprisingly exciting thriller.

We know as readers that the purpose of a thriller is to thrill. Often that comes in the form of action, chase scenes, danger and blood and pain as Events Unfold. But this story is set on the brink of a worldwide pandemic and its uncertainty, its movement-restricting lockdown(s), its fear of others and its focus on somehow staying safe. But safety means different things to Oliver Kennedy and to Ciara Murphy. How much different is what what becomes so clear after the scene is set. They’re going to spend the lockdown cocooned together. This is, for reasons that are slowly and steadily brought into focus, something each urgently desires. They’re both unable to believe their luck, the way the world’s conspired to give them what the need the most.

They’ve been on a few dates. That, and some sex, and an undeniably mutual sense of their rightness of fit together, is what they decide when they’re forced by the pandemic to choose between lockdown apart and forming their own household. They each know they’re being rushed into this too fast; they each decide, for their own reasons, to make the lockdown into an opportunity to explore the new, strange-to-each sense of connection they’re experiencing. Neither decides to share their decision with others in their lives. I sure as heck wouldn’t, would you? Imagine the lectures, the sermonizing, the sheer next-to-panic worry the decision would evoke in a loving family member or even a very good friend. I’d be harping on the idiocy of thinking you know someone who’s barely even an acquaintance enough to spend two weeks of 24/7 days with them!

And now, I suspect there’s something you’re beginning to notice isn’t adding up. I’ve called this story a thriller. And it’s taking place in lockdown. A notoriously sedentary and isolated time. What kind of thriller are we going to get out of that? Just lots of sex, of discovery that Mr. Right is barely Mr. Right Now and Miss Congeniality is in fact vanilla ice cream with blue cheese dressing?

Author Howard has prepared a path for us that takes us into and back out of the past in several layers. The chapters are titled things like “23 Days Ago” and “Now” and the like. Each “Now” chapter focuses on the national police of Ireland, the Garda, investigating the discovery of a dead, badly decomposed body in a new, upscale apartment development. The lives of the senior investigating officers are sketched in but are done so in a way I found compelling and convincing. Like the senior officer getting a text from her junior that he needs her to come unlock him from the handcuffs his last lay left him hooked to the headboard with. We don’t get details. We do get some banter and some clues to the relationship she has with her foolish Sergeant.

What we also get is the certainty that we’re in good storytelling hands. In a chapter of under three thousand words we’re clear that she’s a good friend, a solid mentor, and he’s a foolish risk-taking adrenaline junkie with a great future behind him. They’re going to do everything they can figure out together to solve the puzzle of a dead person in a shower whose name they don’t know and whose life is so unmoored to anyone that the reason the body was discovered is the smell of it rotting bothered the people living in the same hall.

It is in these jump-cuts, these bits of time out of order, that the tapestry of awful crime and condign punishment play out. It is Ciara’s and Oliver’s story, as deeply intertwined and as messily disguised as each facet is, that keeps readerly fingers flipping pages. (Tapping them, in my case; this was a Kindle purchase using up 99¢ of a gift card.) As the points of view shift each time there’s a new date, more and more of the dead body’s tale of woes and wretchedness and unbearably poignant longing to explain and comfort and make things better comes into focus. There is never just one strand to the story. There is never just one angle of attack from which we’re approaching it, as Ciara and Oliver each reveal to the reader how few facts they’re revealing to each other. Every perspective shift offers a different story, both being told and potentially veering off from what has happened...there is a rotting body in a shower in an apartment.

It’s the why of it that is so gripping not the what. It’s the uncertainty that Author Howard uses to make us care...who is the dead person? Why are they dead? How and when did it happen?...over and over, on more and more layers of facts gleaned and fitted into the central puzzle of who the victim is. That answer is revealed as each layer of fact, each question answered, build the shape of the truth underneath the simple set up. A dead body is found in a shower by gardaí called to make a wellness check in a pandemic lockdown.

When all is revealed, as it is, the tense and frustrating ride is very much worth taking. It was never going to be exactly what I expected it to be, as I expected. After all, it’s a thriller. The point of the genre’s conventions is to go on a journey, to make one’s expectations go in ways the answer will not. As accustomed to that fact as I am, I was not expecting the resolution to the central mystery to take the final twist that it did. I’m not at all sure that it was the resolution, in fact; I can see Author Howard’s wicked little smile and devilishly quirked eyebrow as the facts she presents are snapped into a solid, firmly fitting pattern.

That isn’t at all the Truth. Unless it is. But it...really, honestly...might not be. It might be a shadow cast in a weird way by the always fickle Moon moving in its speedy course.

Lies are spindly, unwieldy things. Delicate filaments, like bundles of nerves in the body. Easy to twist, hard to control, impossible to keep hold of.

At the end of this story, Ciara Murphy and Oliver Kennedy are each deeply enmeshed in delicate, twisted filaments of lies told, believed, sold to a desperate self in need of something to hold on to. At the end of this story, there is no ending because the Truth can’t be packaged by being sculpted from facts. In the end, I think the best thrillers are the ones that obey the rules of evidence, that make sure you have facts that matter and are making the story make sense; this story does that at every turn.

Then it stands the facts on their spindly, delicate bundles, and shows you that the truth is you can’t be sure there’s any Truth in the facts. But there’s a thumping good read in them and a pleasure to be derived from their collection. (Just ignore the five (5) w-bombs.)

THE MAN WHO SAW SECONDS, pacey thriller with fun premise

THE MAN WHO SAW SECONDS
ALEXANDER BOLDIZAR
CLASH Books(non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet—causing another man to die in his place. Government agencies become aware of Preble's gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military R&D.

Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

A breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Alexander Boldizar provides an adrenaline-pumping read that will leave you contemplating love, fear and the abyss.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Aptly marketed as a thriller...unusually richly endowed with the more interesting musings on the nature of freedom, the cost of being different, the responsibility to use one's gifts but the acceptance that the gifts have limitations...you get the idea.

The oddest sensation for me as I read this novel was the way it seemed to me to use the form of "thriller novel" to describe the very story he was telling; that is to say, his thrilling idea for a chase story has a core of examining what makes a story thrilling with its use of precognition. Author Boldizar, a Slovak national, knows the apparatus of oppression from the inside. He brings his idea of the abuse of the individual at the hands of government apparatus to the fore here. I myownself see it as a lot more likely that it would be Goldman Sachs or that fuck Zuck's Meta pursuing this dude to use his abilities to make them more money, but we are all as History has made us. (Paraphrasing Judge Dee, from Dee Goong An, feels...weirdly apt in this book's review.)

The other fascinating quality this predictive thriller has is that it plays with a known bit of science that's been studied for a long time: Our brains are pattern-spotting prediction machines. Evolution has made them that way so we can extrapolate from facts...red fruits are sweeter; fruits are red when it's cold; it's going to be cold soon so better get back to those trees before THEY get there...to take actions that help us survive. We've blown past that helpful stage long since. Now we're using that extrapolation /prediction feature to create horrors of exploitive and extractive excesses.

I digress, but only slightly.

What happens as a result of an ill-timed, badly handled cop confrontation is simple: Preble Jefferson lands on the radar of people he's spent his adult life avoiding being noticed by. He's made solid, profitable use of his limited gift of "precognition" (in quotes because it's not actually presented as paranormal in origin so isn't within classic definitions of the term) and now it's time to get exploited. Not if he can help it, he thinks, and the chase is on.

The chase is well constructed, the stakes clear and relatable. I am a fan of thrillers, starting back with The Thirty-Nine Steps, because they utilize the fight-or-flight response to create engagement and investment in their chosen story. Who among us, if pursued, doesn't immediately want to run? And one would think a guy who can see a few seconds into the future would have a huge edge on pursuers. Only of the pursuers don't know about his ability...or its funny little quirk of not working when he gets worked up. So now we're triggering the fight part of the response. Does Our Hero have a fight response? Not really. But threaten a father's belovèd child and see how that goes....

It's a really well-made story that uses the factual human brain predictive skill we see in the elite athletes of the exploitive "sports" industry, only turned up to eleven.

Why only four stars? Because I do not for one second buy that this guy's power would enable him to do the things he's shown doing. It's like my response to superhero stuff (see my joyous warble for the excellent Hench for that): Did you really think this through, Author Boldizar? Do you think this is really what would happen? Starting from the wrong villains (the NSA is a lot less scary than Google/Sundar Pichai or Meta/That Fuck Zuck) I wasn't ever likely to get to a fifth star. I was amused by Our Hero's name, "Jefferson," as evoking that least decent of the Founders gets my quirked eyebrow. (Also the Jeffersonian vision of an agrarian republic repels me.) The funny sidekick Fish the lawyer, evoking my favorite lawyer character Douglas Wambaugh from Picket Fences days, so points added there; and Our Hero being such a solidly loving, involved dad got my approving smiles. Pacing, actual science used albeit unrealistically, guaranteed four stars, but no more could be added.

A four-star entertaining story, with meaty thoughts behind it, is still a big win in my book.

WINTER COUNTS, Native American #OwnVoices thriller

WINTER COUNTS
DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN
Ecco
$16.99 trade paper, available now

WINNER OF THE BEST FIRST NOVEL ANTHONY AWARD FOR 2021! Virtual Bouchercon award ceremonies linked to at the above.

WINNER OF THE BEST INDIGENOUS WRITER at the 2021 High Plains Book Awards.

On The Guardian’s Best Thrillers of 2021 list

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.

Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

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My Review: This is a Brulé Lakota Winter Count:

This cultural tradition, extremely briefly summarized in a Wikipedia article, organizes this novel’s ideas. Virgil Wounded Horse, our aptly and prophetically named vigilante-cum-enforcer hero in this thriller, touches on this fascinating piece of (half) his ancestry’s sense of time and place often enough to make the title of the book emerge organically in the reader’s mind. Virgil muses at one point, “Winter counts were the calendar system used by the Lakota, but they weren't like modern ones. I'd loved the little pictures in the calendars, each image showing the most significant event from the past year.” He muses again, at a later point, “Winter counts. This was the winter of my sorrow, one I had tried to elude but which had come for me with a terrible cruelty.” I think both are ideas of how he, his world, and his sense of self, are in motion at all times. It makes his entire life spent in action make sense…he’s not a Lakota insider, like ex-girlfriend Marie Short Bear, whose ancestry is flawlessly pureblood and perfectly in tune with the power structure within the Rosebud Reservation. He’s not an insider in the white world, either, being a mixed-race outcast from its racist system. It’s been a blessing in that any curse can be turned into an advantage if you’re looking for a way to do it. He’s got a place enforcing justice outside white and Native American legal systems, as required.

What this means is that the character is perfect for a thriller that needs telling to get people to care about the problems heaped on Outsiders, Othered people, by all systems of government. The tribal justice system (arguably distorted by its necessary accommodation to white codes) as much as any other. Virgil is outside, and that is the perfect place to be when the upper echelon needs something done that won’t “look good.” The value of face, of taking things at face value, is something white people with our media obsession have raised to virtual apotheosis; it’s far from untrue of other cultures, however. Marie Little Bear’s tribal leadership position means he can’t directly do the effective thing against the drug cartels hooking Native kids on heroin, with the well-known tragic consequences.

Had the plague not touched Virgil’s nephew, hard, he wouldn’t have agreed to take on the violent and greedy and frankly evil people. But when it’s family, things look different, don’t they. What happens on the reservation has its roots in the not-distant city of Denver. Marie and Virgil set out to confront the ills of their corner of the world by going outside that corner, by bearding the lion in his den, and they are not surprisingly at some disadvantages there. It is as revealing to consider their troubles and issues within the white world of Denver as to examine the world of the reservation in promotion, tolerance, and perpetuation of toxic social maladjustment.

I’m impressed by the way this thriller uses its author’s straddled worlds…he’s Lakota and teaches Native American Studies at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, so clearly he’s quite adept at code-switching…as a full and integrated world for Virgil Wounded Horse. We’re not expected to see Virgil as a man out of place in two worlds, we’re expected to see a man discovering his place in his own world. It is a fine distinction, but an important one. Virgil is an outsider in each of those large, obvious social constructs. He is making his own world, one in which he is the norm, as in the end that is what we all must do to “fit in.” Where the world doesn’t have a place for you, make one.

That is the gift of this read to the reader. Join Virgil Wounded Horse in his thrilling world.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This post is the 1,000th on my blog! I’ve written many thousands of book reviews over the years of many truly enjoyable books. I’m very happy that, after eight and a half years, I’ve reached this milestone blog post with a review of a book I’m happy to recommend that you read as a Booksgiving treat to yourself.

TRUTH IS A FLIGHTLESS BIRD, East Africa-set thriller with several gallons of rage in its belly

TRUTH IS A FLIGHTLESS BIRD
AKBAR HUSSAIN
Iskanchi Press
$25.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: President Obama's impending arrival to Nairobi is the electric backdrop to this dazzling debut, Truth is a Flightless Bird. Yet, beneath the glittering celebrations, beats the pulse of a city aflame.

It is into this crucible that Nice (real name Theresa) lands, fleeing her Somali drug-dealer boyfriend, her brutal UN work in Mogadishu, and the life choices stalking her. So desperate is she to flee that she involves one of her oldest friends, Duncan, an American pastor heading a church in Nairobi. On the way back from the airport, their car crashes, and Nice is abducted by a crooked immigration cop, Hinga.

Duncan awakes after the car crash to find himself captive to the sociopathic Hinga, and the charmingly amoral Ciru. Plucked from his middle class bubble, Duncan must plunge into the moral complexities of the under-city to rescue Nice. But how deep can Duncan go, without destroying his faith, and himself?

Truth is a Flightless Bird is a brutal love letter to the frontier town that is present-day Nairobi: a studied observation of the the failures of bare-knuckled capitalism, the inequality machines our cities have become, and—ultimately—the profoundly irrational human capacity to hope, to risk everything in order to have something in which to believe.

With Truth is a Flightless Bird, Hussain establishes a remarkable voice, one truly his own.

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My Review: The African view...especially the Kenyan view...of Barack Obama's presidency wasn't like the US view in most particulars. Kenyans saw the son of one of their own people rise to the most powerful position in the world and felt slightly awed and overjoyed. (I don't need to discuss what happened here. You know.) It was a moment of real hope, much like the moment the war criminals in charge squandered when the World Trade Center was brought down.

When there aren't "legitimate" means to make a living, improve one's lot in life, people find other means to accomplish those eternally applicable goals. That the drug-smuggling world brings misery and poverty to millions, and millions to the very, very few, doesn't matter to those whose needs include enough food and a decent place to live. (Nor do these same concerns animate the decisions of the tens of thousands in this country who work for defense contractors, or chemical manufacturers.) Nice, as young Theresa is called, is a bored American girl whose needs are catered to by a drug-dealing Somali boyfriend...she's in Mogadishu on an international-aid financed jamboree...and she's cajoled into becoming a drug mule. Fly from Mogadishu to Nairobi, deliver the goods, come back and all will be well.

All is not well.

Nice is kidnapped by people who would prefer their own profits get fattened by the cargo inside Nice. Duncan, her fellow American and a truly clueless White Savior spreadin' the Gospel to people he begins to realize need something to explain the randomness of the Universe and he's there, so he'll do. It's a sobering moment, facing up the fact you're really not qualified to speak for God. Especially when that's the path you've chosen to tread.

When it comes to the Kenyans who set the plot's stressful parts in motion, they're all driven by Big Needs. You know, Revenge and Power and stuff like that. Nothing important...no one here's hurtin' for their next meal. What I got most clearly when I read this uniquely sourced thriller was that there's really no one in it who has one single solitary excuse for what they're doing to make others miserable. Lots of reasons! Not one excuse.

The other thing I learned is that it's hugely dangerous to imagine you're in any way immune from the consequences of your actions. Long may it be so, only a little more equitably distributed and on a thriller novel's time scale. Every one of these souls is screwed over, screwed up, and just plain screwed when the story ends. I wonder if any of them learned anything...I wonder what they dream about when they think of their time in Nairobi. I suspect a lot of "what might have been"s are thought.

None of the characters have great depths that get plumbed but this is a thriller so why would they? What we're offered instead is telling moments...a man thinks of his worthlessness while looking at a grieving father's earlobes in the strong sunshine through a window, a woman picking up an airplane-food omelette whole and shoving it into her mouth...that concisely delineate the characters' inner states. The quietness of it could be read as an absence of effort on the author's part. I say it is, rather, a subtle and really quite uncharitable summing-up of the people in question.

These aren't the details a writer of schlock calls to your attention. They're subtle selections presented at an oblique angle. They are the epitome of show me, don't just tell me. To be sure, there are moments of telling me what might profitably been shown:

To this revelation, which crystallized so much of Duncan's recent experience, Edmund delivered that devastating dialectical upper cut. With a curl of his lip, he asked, "So what?"

Duncan was too stunned and stoned to formulate a sentence.

Too bald. Too prescriptive...I can only be allowed one response to someone who has curled a lip...and not in keeping with the best moments of storytelling in here.

I'll still recommend to y'all that this book join your library. I think what it offers is what the best kinds of thrillers offer: A window into the worst moments of an unremarkably decent person's life. A view into a world not quite as you thought it was, or should be; that no one thinks is as good as it could be. And the bonus is that you're in competent hands guided by eyes and ears that have been where they're telling you about often enough and long enough to command your belief. There's the indefinable air of a person with local knowledge imparting it to you.

Go on the trip, give your thriller-eater the trip, or best of all do both.

GUNPOWDER MOON, a grown-up kick-ass murder mystery-cum-political-thriller

GUNPOWDER MOON
DAVID PEDREIRA
HarperVoyager
$14.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A realistic and chilling vision of life on the Moon, where dust kills as easily as the vacuum of space…but murder is even quicker—a fast-paced, cinematic science fiction thriller, this debut novel combines the inventiveness of The Martian, the intrigue of The Expanse, and the thrills of Red Rising.

The Moon smells like gunpowder. Every lunar walker since Apollo 11 has noticed it: a burnt-metal scent that reminds them of war. Caden Dechert, the chief of the U.S. mining operation on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, thinks the smell is just a trick of the mind—a reminder of his harrowing days as a Marine in the war-torn Middle East back on Earth.

It’s 2072, and lunar helium-3 mining is powering the fusion reactors that are bringing Earth back from environmental disaster. But competing for the richest prize in the history of the world has destroyed the oldest rule in space: Safety for All. When a bomb kills one of Dechert’s diggers on Mare Serenitatis, the haunted veteran goes on the hunt to expose the culprit before more blood is spilled.

But as Dechert races to solve the first murder in the history of the Moon, he gets caught in the crosshairs of two global powers spoiling for a fight. Reluctant to be the match that lights this powder-keg, Dechert knows his life and those of his crew are meaningless to the politicians. Even worse, he knows the killer is still out there, hunting.

In his desperate attempts to save his crew and prevent the catastrophe he sees coming, the former Marine uncovers a dangerous conspiracy that, with one spark, can ignite a full lunar war, wipe out his team . . . and perhaps plunge the Earth back into darkness.

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My Review: First, read this:

“I didn't realize our government considered altruism one of its core competencies," Dechert finally replied. "Is that why we're dropping a treaty that provides free helium-3 for the New Third World?" He started to unstrap his restraints. "I thought it was so we could prove to the orbital executives that we can keep up with their production demands.”
–and–
“Isn't that how most conflicts start? With a gross miscalculation of the possibilities of escalation? A village first, then a peninsula, and then a continent? It is cold up here, commander. Cold and distant. Just a point in space from their viewpoint - valuable but aesthetically detached.”

If we're not just meeting each other, you'll recall my oft-expressed fondness for a pacey, pleasingly noir thriller. That is indeed what we have here. It's 2072; the Moon is split between US and Chinese control; the energy extraction of Humanity's dreams has begun. Caden Dechert is a combat veteran, a polymath and a politically astute loner in charge of the mining operations on US sector of the Moon. After a gigantic disaster more than thirty years ago (Asteroid collisions you can prepare for, carbon emissions you can legislate against, but who expected a subsea methane eruption would plunge us back into the Dark Ages for more than a decade?, asks Caden rhetorically), lunar helium-3 is now the (limited; do we never learn?) resource we need to power the planet.

The thing about using the resources of another world is that it's complicated, requires humans to do complex and still-risky tasks, and exist in an environment that hates you and will kill you in a flash. Caden's job is, in part, to make sure that doesn't happen absent cataclysm...and to head off cataclysm whenever possible. To date he's been a success. Only now the Moon's a crime scene because person(s) unknown have decided to rid Humanity of an innocent waif called Specialist Cole Benson. (Unimportant detail, honestly; how often, in a thriller, does the deadee really matter? That's how one knows it's not a mystery, where it matters a lot.)

What happens from there is an astonishingly fast-paced series of ripples, enacted in meeting rooms and over long, long-distance conference calls. The bureaucracy, the meetings in the face of death, all that's so completely real, so calculatedly cool. No better way to bleed off righteous anger than to have a meeting with the brass. And Dechert, despite his rage and outrage, has caught a scent he really, really doesn't like, a corruption that not even the gunpowder smell of the Moon will hide.

What a truly well-made thriller does best is direct you through misdirection. Keep that in mind, readers. Very firmly in mind.

The dead settle in our mind like cooling embers. After a time they diminish, snuffed out by the immediate, and then a puff of memory rekindles them and for a moment they are hot and near once again.

In discovering the actual intent of the event that killed poor young Specialist Benson, Dechert grows extremely determined to bring true Justice, wearing her Nemesis hat, to the perpetrators of what he regards as appalling immoral acts in service of an unconscionable aim. You've read noir thrillers before. You know this means "badness up the food chain." And that's a discovery Dechert isn't going to let lie, quietly festering. He is, thankfully for his health, talked down off the ledge of taking immediate action. There's a new post awaiting him, one that makes the Moon look like West Virginia: He's shipped out to Europa!

The whys and the wherefores aren't utterly convincing, but I don't care, he's going to EUROPA!! A moon of Jupiter with a huge, huge ocean of liquid brine! Talk about coolness...and talk about remoteness, too, the speed of light takes just over forty minutes to get to Earth from there. That is one hell of a push-off assignment. (I'd take it in a heartbeat.)

So why am I not awarding it all five stars? Because, as much as it pains me to say it, while the tone of the book is right in that indefinable way you feel in your sinews, it's also a message that really, really concerns me at this juncture: Don't trust The Man is an evergreen trope for a reason...The Man's done a lot to earn mistrust over the millennia...but we're facing two severe crises that only The Man can fight effectively, climate change's acceleration and COVID's move from pandemic to endemic and the behavioral changes that NEED to follow on both those things. The noir-lone-wolf-iness of this tale, the one extraordinary man who can put it to rights, is not believable and not timely. That's why the other star fell off my review.

SNAKE ISLAND: A Novel, another good "discover Australian culture through violence" thriller

SNAKE ISLAND: A Novel
BEN HOBSON
Arcade Crimewise
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Phillip Meyer, Fargo, and Justified, a gritty rural noir thriller about family, drugs, and the legacy of violence.

In an isolated town on the coast of southern Australia, Vernon Moore and his wife, Penelope, live in retirement, haunted by an unspeakable act of violence that sent their son, Caleb, to serve time in prison and has driven the couple apart. Ashamed, they refuse to talk about him or visit, but when a close friend warns Vernon that Caleb has been savagely beaten, he has no choice but to act to protect their only child.

The perpetrator of the beating is a local thug from a crime family whose patriarch holds sway over the town, with the police in his pay. Everyone knows they trade in drugs. When Vernon maneuvers to negotiate a deal with the father, he makes a critical error. His mistake unleashes a cycle of violence that escalates to engulf the whole town, taking lives with it, revealing what has been hiding in plain sight in this picturesque rural community and threatening to overtake his son.

Told from shifting perspectives at a sprint, in language that sometimes approaches the simple profundity of parable, this gritty debut was hailed on its Australian publication as “a darkly illuminating thriller that soars across genre constraints . . . [and] engages with pressing contemporary issues while exploring timeless questions. Hobson writes as if his life depends on it” (The Australian).

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My Review: The comps in the first line of the description are spot-on. This is a very *Australian* book, though. It could not have happened in the US or Canada in the way it's presented here. For one thing Author Hobson is careful to set his scenes in rural Victoria state, not some generic hot dry small town. The action is intense, and it's really the point of the read.

By which I mean a compliment...the violence in the story isn't pointless, purposeless activity to distract the reader from something...and a knock: The characters are, to be polite, thin. It is a feature of the majority of high-violence stories that the characters are not the most thoroughly fleshed out. I didn't expect them to be. I was, to my surprise, not particularly able to see how I would've known these were retirees, and their son an older man, had I not been explicitly told so once in a while. Many older couples have that kind of relationship that doesn't look very active from the outside. These two, estranged by their shared shame in their son's terrible actions, barely even register as a unitary family. I'm not implying this is unrealistic, only that it makes the course of the story less comprehensible. Penelope in particular comes across as...detached.

This not being what I was reading the book for, I mention it to others who find the absence of a character to root for a deal-breaker. This is a book about a couple living in an Australian coastal town whose lives are upended in a violent, shaking wind; they then go on to ignore their feelings in that very Australian way; then as the violent wind morphs into a whirlwind, they are forced to find a new and better response to their awful, transformed lives.

The mystery is, will they? I won't tell. I will tell you that I left this thriller entertained and glad for its availablilty in the US.

USING GIFT CARDS: NetGalley Mystery/Thriller Page

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEAD MONEY
JAKOB KERR
Bantam Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.

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My Review: It's a great way to start 2026, this book. Don't buy into the ever-so-cheery façade that the AI-promoting shills very badly want you not to question! There is always a darker side to every shiny surface.

This twisty, really twisted thriller is not realistic, though, because it's a thriller. They're OTT by design. In this case I really liked Mackenzie's utter ruthlessness because it's all too seldom one sees that role fulfilled by a female character. Author Kerr made her legal-eagle skills more believably deployed than I expected in the novel's framework...private-practice lawyers don't get "attached" to FBI investigations, or there'd be no honest investigation ever performed...but again, it's a thriller. Told in several timeframes, with action-slowing jumps, the story still unfolds in a logical way. I'm not eager to hop around quite as much as Author Kerr takes me, but it did all hang together, and none of the hops were unnecessary.

The concept of "dead money"—funds not accessible until some legal process is complete—is very useful indeed. It added a great deal of urgency to this story, and provided a seriously powerful goad for Mackenzie to use every lever she can reach to get the murder of a man who, frankly, just needed killin', resolved. Only in a certain way...which is why she's morally ambiguous and happy to use methods, umm, unorthodox shall we say to accomplish her goal.

That this is Author Kerr's debut novel was really impressive to me. He's clearly an habitual observer. All his characters felt distinct, if not distinctive; but it is a novel set in the tech world, so there the buffet is already laid. It's not a knock, the characters are well used; but it does make me eager to see what more he decides to do beyond this framework. The plot twists are never exactly perfectly convenient for Mackenzie so he's not intellectually lazy. It wasn't entirely his fault that I figured out who committed the murder, nor that I wanted to smack the shit out of some of the entitled goofs he peoples the world with. He's an insider, I think he'd know if these were unfair stereotypes; I'll go with "not" as the answer to that.

The ending was very satisfying, and I particularly liked some of the moralizing speeches in advance of it. Others will feel differently. A very solid debut thriller introducing a new voice in thrillerdom. May he decide to keep developing his good-quality storytelling chops.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SALTWATER
KATY HAYS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now
PREORDER NOW FOR PAPERBACK DELIVERY ON 28 APRIL 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, Italy, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

Haunted by the specter of that night, the paranoid, insular Lingate family begins to crack, and Helen seizes the opportunity with the help of Lorna Moreno, the family assistant. But then Lorna disappears, and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened. Everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect—Helen’s controlling father, Richard; her rarely lucid aunt, Naomi; her distant uncle, Marcus; and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems. As long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes clear: Not everyone will leave the island alive.

Combining a glittering, dark atmosphere, morally-gray characters, and mind-bending twists, Saltwater is an exploration of the corrupting effects of generational privilege and the lengths people go to protect a legacy—and how no one can hold a grudge like family.

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My Review: Poor Helen Lingate...poor little rich girl...it must really feel awful to suffer inside a gilded cage.

Actually, it does. Money does not make people happier, does not insulate them against the awfulness that life chucks into the pits we dig for ourselves. That lots of it is self-inflicted is true of everyone on Earth. It also does not obviate the role of luck in the lottery we call family. Helen got some lousy luck, some decent luck, and genetic gifts out of her family heritage.

What she didn't get was a decent family. Uncle Marcus and dad Richard (!) have her locked into an ugly conservatorship à la Britney Spears. Is his control justified? Is he her concerned papa or a bog-standard greedy parent? Why is the sudden reappearance of the necklace worn by the late Sarah Lingate the night of her death such a jolt?

A gothic story of grudges nursed, retribution plotted, and cruelty from unexpected quarters, all set on the storied isle of Capri...there's a reason Tiberius used this locale as his hideaway, it's so lush...and soapishly ornate. I had a good time indeed. The big twist that family stories must always have amused me greatly. Using multiple narrative voices was a clever way to avoid giving the game away. Jumping around in time is just the way things seem to be in thrillers in 2025. I'm not the biggest fan, but it does allow us to keep a real sense of suspense here. A good way to hide clues is to put them in a different frame from the main story's narrative.

A second novel from an author whose first, The Cloisters, I have not read. I won't accuse her of sophomore slump!

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CAT'S PEOPLE
TANYA GUERRERO
Delacorte Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where her feeds her favorite stray—a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns Núria’s favorite bodega?

When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves bonding together in their desire to care for him, and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they’ve all been searching for.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I said yes to this story from the publisher because I need to keep challenging my prejudices. One of those is a strong dislike of Felis catus in all its colorways and personality types. Cat people don't tend to be sane in reference to their cult objects, which worries me for the future of humanity.

Romantic plots and sentimental results are just not my favorites. Remarkably Bright Creatures got my highest-ever rating for this kind of fiction, at four full stars; that was down to Marcellus the cephalopod not being, oh let's just say for example, a cat.

I liked Marcellus' narrative voice more than the human narrators' voices. I liked Cat's voice among these narrators more than the human ones. I was particularly amused by Cat's names for the humans. The struck me as very likely the real way that cats see their cultists. Would I have bought this book for myself? Surely you jest! (Leslie Nielsen...what do you call an earworm when it's a meme, not a song lyric?...reference only more pointed, intentional.) It's a damn sight better than those unbearable cutesy-poopsie Japanese bookshop-cat things y'all're lappin' up like they're cream.

I don't have to like something to know when it's well-made. This is a well-made polyphonic sentimental novel that's good at smoothing your emotional fur while scratching that itchy place, that "I need a happy" place, you can't reach on your own.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PARTY OF LIARS
KELSEY COX
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

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My Review: I like the classic drama technique of setting a story during the course of one day. Of course, in line with modern trends, the story's told in multiple timelines and PoVs. It's the action taking place that's all the story's Today. It works reasonably well in Author Kelsey's hands.

I think the enduring appeal of rich-people shenanigans is the scope for soap (opera) they provide. Setting a novel at a Sweet-Sixteen party is fiendishly clever because adolescence, that time of adult-strength emotions without adult perspective to help manage them, is quite the drama-driving force. The adults in this story appear not to have resolved their own angry adolescent issues, then add the new generation's...!

Exploring these varying levels of rage, envy, and desire is the meat of this story. It makes the read absorbing...if you're reading for character. As a thriller, Author Kelsey's debut novel shows her learning curve. I would've asked her to give us real action more frequently than all at the end of the read. It's not dull before then, it is very interior. A thriller with that kind of reflectiveness is not bad, only a tad slower than many genre readers would prefer.

Getting to know these folks was enough satisfaction for me, so I recommend it to y'all who like character novels even if the "thriller" label turns you off; and y'all thriller lovers ought to give these flawed, damaged women some room to expand your repertoire.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

That Devil, Ambition
Linsey Miller
Storytide (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: here is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

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My Review: Dark academia YA with murderous schools prioritizing the killer instincts of the students...shades of that ghastly Yarros series y'all're gobbling up. I really detested that farrago on multiple axes. One big one is how idiotic a parent would have to be to consent to their child being admitted under these circs.

...and then...how different is it, really, from the titanic greed mill that is the student loan racket? How different is it from this administration resuming the revolting practice of garnishing paychecks of student-loan debtors as long as those debtors are left with $217.50 from the paycheck? Debt peonage is a real threat to people's ability to live.

So, while I was sniffy at first, I had to admit the horror, the evil personified, was more than dramatically fun...it was really quite on point. The concept of "severance" in this magic system made me think very strongly of the TV show. It's a bigger take on the idea but similarly evil in its intent. I was deeply impressed throughout by the clear, unambiguous tenor of matter-of-factness...it enabled the moral stakes to stand stark in contrast to the worldbuilding. I approve of such a contrast as a didactic storytelling choice because once one sees the contrast as the commentary it is, it can't be unseen.

The same matter-of-factness points up the controversial inclusiveness of the queer people in this story...literally all of them in relationships, and all the same at risk of betrayal-for-advancement as cishet couples. In other words, no single hair's breadth of difference between them. That this is a comment on the narrative being pushed by external forces is entirely invisible, until you see it.

I'm sure you're getting my drift by now. This is a story of a scoobygroup with a life-or-death motivation to resist the narrative they're being sold. Their actions will make the world...so they need to choose how they're going to do that in the face of a death-dealing Devil who has absolute power over them.

I think over-forty readers might sigh and roll their eyes at the beginning 25%, thinking they were in for a very specific kind of read. To them I say, put it down for a week, read some porn...oops, romantasy...or something, then come back to get your surprise. Author Linsey's talking to people who don't have our frame of reference. Clear your cookies then come refreshed as she shifts registers to one more suited to the "A" bit of YA.

It isn't perfect but damn! It heartened and elevated me in my mood and affect. That is saying a lot in 2025.

THE IBIS TAPESTRY by Mike Nicol, a not-very-thrilling thriller that's still a good read

THE IBIS TAPESTRY
MIKE NICOL
Vintage Books
$15.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: An audacious departure for the internationally acclaimed South African novelist--a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today's headlines.

Who was Christo Mercer, and why was he brutally stabbed to death in a remote Saharan town? For Robert Poley, an unhappy writer of political thrillers, the welcome distraction posed by this question has become an obsession. With the mysterious delivery of a laptop computer and a cryptic email message, he finds himself slowly entwined in the vagaries that constituted Mercer's life and death. An illegal-arms trader haunted by his nightmares, his past, and his clandestine involvement with a ruthless rebel-- and with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great --Mercer lived on the grand stage of history, yet remained obscured by shadows until his seemingly fated demise. Now, piece by piece, in a complex web of social, political, personal, and fictional disclosures, the intricacies of Mercer's troubled psyche begin to reveal a pattern as corrupt as South Africa's in the aftermath of apartheid--years of judicial inquiry, the Truth Commission, and continued social unrest.

With alchemical bravura, Mike Nicol turns history into fiction and fiction into history, bringing to allegorical life the haunting story of a murder emblematic of South Africa's recent past.

My Review: Well...that piece of publisher puffery isn't, in my opinon, supported by this highly literary and relatively suspenseless, badly miscategorized "thriller." There is nothing thrilling about the narrator's life. The thrilling subject of the narrator's research project is all flashback and invention, barnacled with notes, digressions, irrelevant faux-research-paper citations...it gets tedious.

But what makes this read a good one for me is the thing that I suspect would turn off the mass of American readers: Untranslated Afrikaans words, unexplained geography, facets of South Africa's rich and complex culture that will be unfamiliar. I am a little better versed in these things, as I dated a South African for a good while; but I would hope that avid readers would find it an interesting chance to learn about this amazing place.

Mike Nicol has a considerable reputation as a thriller writer. A novel of his, HORSEMAN, was hugely and internationally acclaimed. As THE IBIS TAPESTRY is the first of his works I've read, I think I'll try it before reaching a conclusion about Mr. Nicol's readerly chemistry with me. Based on this book alone, I don't think I'd be a fan. But there's a lot to be interested in here.

The arms trade is a scourge on the world. South Africa, after an arms-sale embargo was put in place by the UN in 1963, developed a gigantic and sophisticated war-machinery manufacturing sector. Industries require sales and sales require customers and customers are thick on the ground among the hate-fueled warriors infesting Africa. So it's only logical that a well-connected "Englishman" with a serious psychological problem...what we'd call in the here and now PTSD...that fixates him on the world of power players and influence peddlers in his native South Africa. The Marlowe play he obsessively reads, analyzes, revises in his own words is the epitome of England's 16th-century expansionist, imperialist self-image building. It's not too much of a leap to see this man's fascination for our narrator, a writer of thrillers in the airport-book mode. His own life and family have blown up in his face and he badly needs a complex puzzle to work out.

The complexity of the puzzle is a big part of the book's appeal for me. As our narrator moves through the steps of solving his subject's murder, he takes steps that lead him into contact with the underside of South Africa's arms trade, supplying warlords with destructive capacity and to hell with the consequences. The South African arms trade is global, but by focusing on Africa and its warring factions, Nicol manages the tough trick of illuminating the horrors and consequences of war with the minimum of gore. It is the gift of the talented storyteller to make a subtext of violence. I see the gift in Nicol's story of THE IBIS TAPESTRY. But it takes a love of puzzles to get the most from this book's complicated world.

UNTRACEABLE, ex-Soviet thriller author slyly pokes powerful people in the ribs..."I saw that!" with deniability

UNTRACEABLE
SERGEI LEBEDEV (tr. Antonina W. Bouis)
New Vessel Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 2018, a former Russian secret agent and his daughter were poisoned with a lethal neurotoxin that left them slumped over on a British park bench in critical condition. The story of who did it, and how these horrendous contaminants were developed, captivates and terrifies in equal measure. It has inspired acclaimed author Sergei Lebedev’s latest page-turning novel.

At its center is a scheming chemist named Professor Kalitin, obsessed with developing an absolutely deadly, undetectable and untraceable poison for which there is no antidote. He becomes consumed by guilt over the death of his wife, the first accidental victim of his Faustian pact to create the ultimate venom, and the deaths of hundreds of test subjects. After he defects from the Soviet Union to spend his “retirement” years in the West, two Russian secret agents are dispatched to assassinate him.

In this fast-paced, genre-bending novel, Lebedev weaves tension-filled pages of stunningly beautiful prose exploring the historical trajectories of evil. From Nazi labs, Stalinist plots, the Chechen Wars, to present-day Russia, Lebedev probes the ethical responsibilities of scientists supplying modern tyrants and autocrats with ever newer instruments of retribution, destruction and control. Lebedev, one of Russia’s most important and exciting writers, has never been better.

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My Review: I do not know why this story did not sell a million copies on release, or why so many highly respected outlets' praise (The New York Times, Library Journal, CrimeReads) did not result in bestsellerdom and a residency on top of the lists. It couldn't be the quiet discouragement of Powerful People, of course not...but somehow y'all slept on this well-told, excitingly plotted, extremely timely thriller.

What do you mean, "so did you"? No of course I didn't! I had...COVID...oh yeah...forgot about that.

Time to rectify that.

Let's start with the prose:

Kalitan felt uncomfortable. The pushy women, the noisy, grumbling line, the obnoxious kids annoyed him. The boys suddenly ran off and whispered to the adults pointing at the car. Kalitin turned around and saw that the bouncing ride had loosened the tarp. The sun shone on the monkey's dead face, yellow teeth bared in the pink mouth; shiny chrome-green flies crawled over the black fur.

A Goodreads friend, herself a novelist, used this passage to illustrate why the story did not work for her. I'm the opposite, in this case. As a reader of thrillers I want to see, to get into my eyes, the scenes; it's the m.o. of the thriller to be cinematic and evoke a response with urgency not build-up in most situations. I got my cues...yellow, pink interiors of vulnerability; metallic green, black, shiny exteriors of impermeability. My eyes are there.

It isn't going to work for everyone, but what does? Translator Bouis did not overcomplicate or undersell at any turn the intent of a thriller. I really got involved, as a result, in the way the story presents the conflict of guilt and culpability as reluctant internalization of results in physical reality.

Poisoning someone by premeditated action would come across as depraved, indifferent, if done in this framework. Instead this story is about creating conditions by one's curiosity and labor to resolve that curiosity in physical form that result in...entirely without one's own involvement...the greatest possible harm to a stranger. Think it's implausible? Go watch Oppenheimer, and/or read American Prometheus.

What works best in this way of presenting the story is (for me) the sheer number of SNAFUs and FUMTUs that plague attempts to "neutralize the threat" that is Kalitin's continued existence, after his creation is revealed to be the cause of death of politically inconvenient people. While he is not-really trying to deal with knowledge that processing would render horrifyingly painful, those trying to make their orders from on high real get more and more tripped up, screwed up, and outright thwarted by...well, everything.

It is always the case that ability to act outpaces ability to reflect. Kalitin is now reflecting, reluctantly, on his actions. We are not, thank goodness, subjected to his self-justifications. We see actions and results, we perceive probable responses, but we are never in the muck that is this morally compromised, no bankrupt, man's head. I think listening to a human's self-exculpatory inner chatter is pointless and painful.

A reckoning is a cathartic experience in life and in reading. Very, very seldom do reckonings come cleanly defined, with sharp edges and self-evident results. Fiction tries for that completeness at its peril, as this is fantasy fulfillment. Would you expect a Russian author, in the time of Little Vladdy Pu-Pu, to attempt that kind of blame assignment?