Review by New York Times Review
PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE IS a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves. Too much reality - or too much foolishness - and the pact made with the reader to believe in the unbelievable is broken. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula in AN ANONYMOUS GIRL (St. Martin's, $27.99), a creepy-crawly tale about putting your trust in a stranger; specifically, in a strange psychologist. Jessica Farris, a young theatrical makeup artist living on peanuts, sneaks into a high-paying "morality and ethics research project" being conducted by Lydia Shields, a psychology professor at New York University. Anticipating a formal printed questionnaire, Jessica is disconcerted to be bombarded with highly personal questions. "Subject 52, you need to dig deeper," she's prompted by the dauntingly elegant Dr. Shields, who knows Jessica is an impostor, but finds her interesting. And dig she does, revealing herself so completely that Dr. Shields focuses exclusively on her. Although this will no doubt set off alarms for discerning readers, Jessica seems oblivious to the unlikelihood of such a setup. And indeed, it turns out that Dr. Shields is really looking for an attractive (and rather dumb) young woman to test her husband's fidelity. Given the rather far-fetched premise of this tale of mutual sexual obsession, the authors do a neat job of ratcheting up the suspense when Jessica begins going out on assignments to pick up married men in bars. And it comes uncomfortably close to being a justifiable betrayal when Dr. Shields's husband has an affair with Jessica, confirming his wife's previously unfounded hypothesis that he's "an unrepentant adulterer." At least he has the discretion to warn his lover about his wife. "She's dangerous," he says. "Watch yourself." But it's the danger that makes infidelity such fun, and the authors know exactly how to play on their characters' love of danger to bring them to the brink of disaster - and dare them to jump off. you could choke on the bonedry atmosphere of SCRUBLANDS (Atria, $26.99), Chris Hammer's gritty debut novel about a sex scandal that has left a small Australian desert town reeling. A year has passed since a church shooting torched the parched landscape of Riversend, where everyone talks about the punishing weather but few have the stamina to take it without boiling over into rage or despair. The chary locals are less forthcoming about the lingering horror of the mass shooting in which a young priest took the lives of five members of his elderly congregation. A journalist named Martin Scarsden has been assigned by his editor at The Sydney Morning Herald to write a feature about how the town is coping with the trauma, only to be told by Mandalay Blonde, the owner of a bookstore, that the real story is why the priest carried out the killings in the first place. And while he's at it, why not find out if the accepted motive of pedophilia holds up. Taking up the challenge, Scarsden delves into the history of this cursed town and its haunted inhabitants, emerging with a sensitively rendered back story about people who have willfully blinded themselves by staring into the sun too long. the only thing sadder than a majestic hotel fallen on hard times is one with a dead body in Room 413. Detective Aidán Waits of the Manchester police force finds the corpse, its jaws locked in a hideous death grin, in Joseph Knox's edgy noir mystery THE SMILING MAN (Crown, $26), and for his sins catches the case. Those transgressions include a meth habit that pretty much puts Waits in debt to his hard-nosed superior officer, Superintendent Parrs, who holds him on a short leash. "It's convenient to keep a compromised officer around the place," Parrs gloats. "Someone I've got so much dirt on that I can use him for special jobs." Here, "special" means "illegal," and Waits uses his burglary skills to plant drugs on a suspect. Despite these unorthodox ploys, he's a smart guy who understands that "sometimes you confound expectations, sometimes you grow into the thing that people think you are." thirty years ago, six teenagers went camping in Brinken Wood. Five of them came out alive, and one of them was never seen again until now, in the opening pages of SHE LIES IN WAIT (Random House, $27). This enjoyably chilling suspense tale by Gytha Lodge conveys both the thrills and the dangers of being a teenager on the brink of adult independence. Aurora Jackson never had the chance to taste those thrills before the dangers caught up with her, leaving her bones behind to be found by a rebellious little girl poking around in the woods. Lodge tells the story in interlocking time frames that shift from the present to a summer day in 1983 when 14-year-old Aurora was allowed to hang out with her older sister Topaz's "strange, anarchic, brilliant and beautiful friends." The obvious questions of how she died and at whose hand are properly dealt with. But the fascination of this story is in the character studies of the surviving children, all grown up now and participants in a dark mystery that they all wish had never seen the light of day. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
There were seven of them, seven teens on a weekend camping trip Brett, Connor, Daniel, JoJo, Coralie, Topaz, and Aurora. After a night of partying, fueled by alcohol and Dexedrine, six of the teens wake up to discover the seventh, Aurora (Topaz's shy, awkward younger sister) missing. And missing she will stay for the next 30 years until her remains are found buried near the campsite, and it is discovered that she had been raped before dying. Enter Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens, who, 30 years earlier, had been at school with the other teens and who now discovers that the surviving six are still a tight-knit group, though one of them is a rapist and murderer. Ah, but which one? This first in a promised series of Jonah Sheens mysteries is a bit anticlimactic, though the story is neatly plotted and nicely atmospheric. And, yes, there is the obligatory, teasing red herring, but the solution to this British import is plausible and eminently satisfying. Encore, please.--Michael Cart Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
On July 22, 1983, bright, beautiful 14-year-old Aurora Jackson, the victim at the heart of British author Lodge's atmospheric debut, disappeared in Brinken Wood in England's New Forest. The discovery of her remains 30 years later near the site where she was camping with her older sister and five other schoolmates catapults Southampton Det. Chief Insp. Jonah Sheens back to one of his first-and most haunting-investigations. The secluded location suggests that the prime suspects remain the same tight circle of family and friends who were in the woods that night-a prospect troubling to the enigmatic Sheens for reasons that will only gradually emerge. Lodge smoothly intercuts the present-day police probe by whip-sharp recent transfer Det. Constable Juliette Hanson and other team members with flashbacks to the last day of Aurora's life as seen through her eyes. In large part due to flip-flops to facilitate the plot, the surviving campers, including a current MP, never become as convincing as the detectives. Nonetheless, this psychological thriller marks a promising start to a planned series. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When a teenage girl goes missing after a wild camping trip in Lodge's debut thriller, those involved must live with uncertainty for 30 years, until her body is found.Seven teenagers go into the forest in southeast England; only six return. Thirty years later, Aurora Jackson's body is found near the campsite where she disappeared. DCI Jonah Sheens, a young policeman when Aurora went missing and only a few years ahead of her in school, has personal connections to the case; he remembers the first unrelenting rounds of interviews that never turned into leads, and he knows that, with a body in hand, it will be only a matter of time before Aurora's killer is exposed. There were six others in the woods that nightAurora's beautiful, wild older sister, Topaz; wealthy, connected Daniel; tattooed, volatile Connor; independent tomboy Jojo; childlike Coralie; and handsome star athlete Brett, the newest member of the group. Most of them were drunk and some high, so their recollections of the night have never been clear, but they have maintained their innocence and served as one another's alibis. But time can erode even the deepest devotion and friendship. Lodge alternates chapters between the present day, starting with the finding of the body, and the night of Aurora's disappearance. The characters are presented both as teenagers and then as people in their 40s who have never quite moved on from that terrible night. Sheens and his team are compassionate, clever, and likable, each with a story that will, we assume, be developed in later books. Despite the small list of suspects, the mystery intrigues and twists, offering enough red herrings and moments of police procedural to please fans of the genre.There are already two more DCI Sheens novels in the workshooray! Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
