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and dishonorable politicos. Martin’s traumatized, messy lead o en comes across more like a walking cliché than a three-dimensional character, and it’s hard to root for her journalistic success when she barely manages to conduct a single interview over the course of several months. A smattering of cli -hangers and a hard-charging nale keep the pages turning, but Dani’s atness as a char- acter and some implausible late-stage plot developments muddy the waters. ough Martin shows promise, this doesn’t quite hang together. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.) e Model Patient Lucy Ashe. Union Square, $18.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-4549-6077-5 ★ ❘ Ashe ( e Sleeping Beauties ) draws readers in with this seductive story of obsession centered on a young wife and her enigmatic therapist in 1960s London. Evelyn Westbrook has felt lost ever since her marriage brought an abrupt end to
sessions with Dr. Daley, a Freudian psychologist. As Daley solicits intimate revelations from Evelyn, including that she was sexually abused as a teen, she grows both desperately attracted to him and infuriated by his dispassionate neutrality. Soon, Evelyn starts to unravel, and Ashe keeps readers deliciously uncertain about who’s manipulating whom. By depicting the domestic and social pressures on Evelyn with meticulous realism, Ashe makes the character’s possible descent into madness equal parts plausible and chilling. Evocative, empathetic, and ultimately empowering, this coiled psychological thriller will be catnip for fans of Alex Michaelides. (Apr.) Last One Out Jane Harper. Flatiron, $29.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-250-29139-4 A woman returns to a deteriorating Australian mining town ve years a er her son’s disappearance in this satisfying slow-burn from Harper ( Exiles ). e once close-knit commu- nity of Carralon Ridge has thinned in recent years, with most residents either eeing or contemplating buy- outs from the ever-expanding Lentzer coal mine. Rowena “Ro” Crowley’s estranged husband, Gri , still works for Lentzer, though he spends most of his time grieving the couple’s son, Sam, who vanished ve years earlier while conducting in-person inter- views for a research paper about the socioeconomic impact of the mine’s expansion. Ro moved away from Carralon Ridge soon a er, but she’s come back to be with her family on the h anniversary of Sam’s disap- pearance. When she arrives, the com- munity is abuzz about the death of the local pub owner. His suspicious demise and the ensuing dispute over his property rights fuel gossip and speculation about Lentzer’s business practices; soon, Ro starts to suspect that the company might be hiding details about Sam’s disappearance. Harper’s evocative portrayal of a decaying landscape and the grief-bur- dened people who live there provides
assassin, an Iranian chemistry profes- sor from Tehran. Aphra convinces Zak that she’s a spymaster responding to his request to join the service, which sets all the players on a danger- ous collision course. Sly asides and metacommentary from a cynical narrator who’s identi ed only as the “spirit of spying” complement the verisimilitude Wol brings to the proceedings. Fans of Mick Herron’s Slough House series will appreciate this. (Apr.) e Silver Fish Conner Martin. Mysterious Press, $26.95 (312p) ISBN 978-1-61316-735-9 A second-rate foreign correspondent gets sucked into deadly tensions between the U.S. and China in Martin’s lively if far-fetched debut. Hard-drinking reporter Dani Moreau has washed up in Ghana, where she’s looking for a big story to get her foundering career back on track. While poking around for leads, she stumbles on a shadow war between the CIA and Chinese operatives, who are jockeying for control of under- sea ber optic cables o the African coast, which power world communi- cation. To report the story—and stay alive—Dani must navigate a land- scape rife with oligarchs, assassins,
her modeling career. She’s spent recent months plagued by vivid
nightmares and locked in a ght with her husband and his family about her decision to take birth control pills. To cope, she begins secret weekly therapy
A Deadly Episode Anthony Horowitz. Harper, $32 (608p) ISBN 978-0-063305-74-8
and Hawthorne’s relationship as more
★
tumultuous than it really is. A er production gets underway, Horowitz and Hawthorne end up with a fresh homicide to investigate when David Caine, the rising star playing Hawthorne, is
HOROWITZ’S ever-inventive Horowitz and Hawthorne series gets extra meta c- tional in this brilliant sixth installment (a er Close to Death ). In the world of the novel, Anthony Horowitz is the sidekick to master sleuth Daniel Hawthorne, and the pair’s rst murder case was long ago immortalized in the true crime bestseller e Word Is Murder . e action begins with the duo learning that e Word Is Murder is being adapted into a lm. Horowitz is suspicious: the proj- ect is backed by a little-known production company, and screenwriter Shanika Harris is frank about her lack of interest in stories about murder and desire to depict Horowitz
stabbed to death in his trailer. ough the initial inquiry focuses on Caine’s many ene- mies, Horowitz soon comes to suspect that the real Hawthorne was the intended target. As always, the author combines delicious dry humor with a rigorous fair-play whodunit, but this installment’s Scream -like Hollywood satire takes it to another level. is series is in peak form. (Apr.)
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