Review by Booklist Review
The discovery of a murdered woman, Danielle Roberts, on a bench in a public park in a suburb of Austin, Texas, sets off a chain of events that shake a seemingly average family to its core. Abbott's new thriller digs deeply into the minds of the members of the Pollitt family, friends and neighbors to the dead woman, each of whom is affected by the murder in his or her own way. As curiosity about the woman's death grows, the suspicious eyes of the Pollitts turn to one another. The question looms: Could one of them have committed the crime? And who is sending anonymous messages to one of the Pollitt children? Who is threatening the Pollitt father? Abbott's use of multiple points of view is strikingly effective, providing a smart way of showing the reader the broad-strokes picture while zooming in and out to focus on specific details and moments. Questions stack up in the reader's mind until the urge to race through the book is virtually unstoppable. Another fine, suspenseful novel by a master of the psychological thriller.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in an affluent Austin, Tex., suburb, this cunning and complex domestic thriller from bestseller Abbott (The Three Beths) centers on the Pollitt family: parents Iris and Kyle and their teenage children, Julia and Grant. Early one morning, Julia and a friend, Ned, find Ned's mother, Danielle Roberts, murdered in a neighborhood park. The Pollitts' lives are turned upside down as all four family members become entangled in the subsequent investigation. Danielle--who facilitated the Pollitts' contentious adoption of Grant from a St. Petersburg orphanage when he was a baby--had a complicated history with Iris and Kyle. Julia is tangentially involved in Ned's prescription drug dealing business, and Grant has been receiving disturbing emails warning him that his parents are lying to him. Excerpts from Iris's old journal chronicling Grant's adoption process raise the suspense. And while the jaw-dropping conclusion feels a bit contrived, readers will appreciate the savvy way in which Abbott fits together the pieces of the puzzle. This page-turner will please old and new fans alike. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In three-time Edgar nominee Abbott's Never Ask Me, the murder of adoption consultant Danielle Roberts in an upscale Austin neighborhood upends the Pollitt family, who feel grief, relief, and suspicion ("Never ask me what I'd do to protect my family," says the wife) (50,000-copy first printing). In three-time Edgar nominee Atkins's The Revelators, Sheriff Quinn Colson, bullet-holed and left for dead, is feeling vengeful but kept from getting back to work by the interim sheriff--who ordered his murder. Continuing No. 1 New York Times best-selling Coulter's popular "FBI Thriller" series, Deadlock has FBI Special Agent Lacey Sherlock and husband Dillon Savich dealing with a psychopath, a secret from beyond the grave, and three red boxes puzzlingly containing the puzzle pieces of an unknown town (200,000-copy first printing). The multi-award-winning Hamilton's A Dangerous Breed brings back Van Shaw, tracking down the (worse-than-he-thought) father who abandoned him before birth while aiming to block a sociopath by stealing a viral weapon that could bring death to thousands (100,000-copy first printing). The acclaimed Kellermans' Half Moon Bay brings back Deputy Coroner Clay Edison, confounded by the discovery of a decades-old child's skeleton in a torn-up park and a local businessman's claim that it could be his sister. In mega-best-selling Camilla Läckberg's The Golden Cage, the increasingly restless wife of a billionaire learns that he is having an affair and exacts luscious revenge. Patterson and Tebbetts join in 1st Case, wherein Angela Hoot gets kicked out of MIT's graduate school, joins the FBI's cyber-forensics unit, and must deal with a messaging app whose beta users are dying without getting killed herself (475,000-copy first printing). In When She Was Good, the Gold Dagger-winning and Edgar short-listed Robotham continues the story of criminal psychologist Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac, the girl without a past, first revealed in last year's Good Girl, Bad Girl. And though there are no plot details to share regarding Silva's Untitled new Gabriel Allon thriller, the print run is 500,000, and word has it that MGM has acquired the rights to adapt the entire series for television.
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