Just like politics, all the crime in this corner of Georgia turns out to be painfully local.
Slaughter returns to North Falls, Georgia, for another 15 horrifying rounds of domestic violence.
If everyone in Clifton County knows everyone else, that may be because half the people in North Falls, one of the county’s four cities, are named Clifton. Det. Allison Vickery doesn’t turn up for the funeral of acting sheriff Emmy Clifton’s mother, Myrna Joy Clifton, first because she’s fleeing her abusive husband, Bill Garrison, then because she’s shot dead. Her murder pulls Emmy, who inherited her job and all its headaches when her father, veteran sheriff Gerald Clifton, was killed six weeks ago, and retired FBI agent Jude Archer, the much older sister who ran off to San Francisco 40 years back, away from the funeral rites and into another of Slaughter’s matchless webs of intrigue inside and outside the Clifton clan. Allison wasn’t the only person shot in the house she was frantic to leave, and the evidence suggests that the shooter had also been targeting her teenage daughter, Mandy, all along. Working closely together even though their troubled family history puts them constantly at odds, Emmy and Jude thrash through a thicket of wrongdoing, from a thriving drug ring to a corrupt cop who’s rumored to have buried some crucial evidence, before they link Allison’s killing to an ancient murder trial that took a 180-degree turn after one of the jurors died. Every twist in the path to the truth is riveting—especially the final revelation, which puts all the others in the shade—but the most important relationship is between the two investigators, one of whom harbors a secret the other can’t imagine.
Just like politics, all the crime in this corner of Georgia turns out to be painfully local.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2026
ISBN: 9780063458789
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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