'WHEN I KILL YOU'.....HER PAST AND PRESENT......EQUALLY FILLED WITH DREAD, DANGER AND DEATHS....

 When I Kill You by B.A. Paris (2026)

     The dual timeline plot construction comes close to borderline annoying, the lead heroine is pretty much a whiny mess and the killer's repetitive musing about their stalking and stabbing might prompt a reader to yell out, "Oh, shut up already will ya?"

     But I must say, leave it to B.A. Paris to overcome all those clumsy stumbles and still deliver a twisty, fun read, packed with mysterious deaths and no shortage of suspects and startling moments.

     Elle Nugent had to fashion a whole new life and identity for herself after her amateur pursuit of a man she believed to be a murderer ended with incredible tragedy - with herself facing jail time and branded as a public pariah. Now living as Nell Masters, she has a new French-American boyfriend, Alex, a host of close new friends and a wonderful inherited house in London.

     But Elle's two lives, unfolding in alternating past and present chapters, are both filled with anxiety, danger and a constant sense of oncoming dread. In the past, her relentless stalking and harassment of the man she's sure she saw abducting a murdered girl goes horribly off the rails. In the present, she's convinced she's now the one being followed and worried that her tortured past and terrible mistakes have come back to do more than just haunt her and aggravate her guilt.

     As expected in a B. A. Paris thriller, I couldn't stop turning the pages and of course stayed up a little later than I wanted, just to find out what happens next. And that just sounded like a 4 star recommendation, so I don't think I need blather on any further. Fine read from an author who never disappoints.

     4 stars (****) and a thank you to NetGalley and St.Martin's Press for the advance read in exchange for an honest review. 

'MURDER WILL OUT'....WHO KILLED WHO ON THE SPOOKY MAINE ISLAND.....THE STILL BREATHING OR THE DEAD?

  Murder Will Out by Jennifer K. Breedlove (2026)

     This one's jam packed with stuff I usually love. Remote little islands off the New England coast. Spooky mansions. Family secrets stretching back decades. And.......ghosts.

     'Murder Will Out' is filled to the brim with all of that but the real task at hand for an author is to find a way to smoothly blend them all together. And that where I'm afraid this book didn't quite get it done for me.

     I was taken with the idea that Little North Island and its notorious Cameron House are populated with more ghosts than the passenger list of the 'Titanic'. And that keeping track of the Cameron family genealogy is like sifting through the March Madness basketball brackets.

     But our lead character suddenly thrust into all of this murderous paranormal mish-mash, Willow Stone isn't particularly relatable or likable, nor are much of the supporting cast either. (Though I did get a real kick out of the nasty, crotchety, crumbling old geezer who's one of the still living possible heirs hoping to inherit the creepy house with more ghosts than dust bunnies. Willow's late Godmother was a devoted companion to the late owner of the mansion......and yes, there seems to be a bunch of people who've gone 'late' one way or another.. And they all had something to do with that house. Hmmm.....

     Every so often there are bursts of genuine humor in this book and it desperately could've used a whole lot more of them. And the setting for the melodramatic, cinematic Grand Finale is telegraphed way way ahead of time. (But for all I know, that might be intentional on the author's part, promising us a Hitchcockian fight-to-the-the-finish if we'll just hang around long enough for it.)

     Well I did hang round long enough and found 'Murder Will Out', with all its flaws, a mildly entertaining read. Not the worst choice for a rainy night or a suitable kinder, gentler pick for Halloween.

     3 stars (***). (And I thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advance read in exchange for an honest review.)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL 'BUT THE DOW IS UP 50,000 POINTS!!!' EDITION.....

 

Stress free (and Trump free) weekend to all weary BQ visitors and all Americans and Europeans shaking their heads in disbelief at this weekly lava flow of madness......

BQ will be helping a family member celebrate a birthday this Monday, so see you Tuesday with hot-off-the-presses reviews of two fascinating book thrillers!....and more movies too!

'MATERIALISTS'....THE.RICH AND THE POOR ROMANCING IN NYC.....OVERWRITTEN AND UNDERPERFORMED.....

 Materialists (2025)

      This slight, negligible romantic drama, tailored for film festival culture vultures, came and went within a few weeks.

       Nobody missed anything.......of that we can assure you, having seen it. 

        Written and directed by Celine Song ("Past Lives"), it's a static, verbose slog tracking the romantic ups and downs of professional matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson). She's the star employee of Adore, a posh outfit that prizes itself on its number of perfected calibrated pairings that end up in marriages. 

        But clouds form on Lucy's sunny, well paid life. She's unable to find a suitable match for herself;  she's happily comfortable with her expensive New York lifestyle, leading to her breakup with John (Chris Evans) who's still a struggling impoverished actor eking out a living as a caterer's waiter  (As a former actress Lucy and John used to struggle together.....)

       At the wedding of one of her clients, she runs into John who's there as a server,  but also encounters the smoothly charming and wealthy brother of the groom Harry (Pedro Pascal).....and sparks are struck with Harry and maybe re-ignited with John.

        And hence, Lucy's dilemma :  What's girl to do when faced with this singularly different choice of men agog for her?  Harry's her perfect match-up, given his station and her own attraction to material things. But then there's earnest, heart-on-his-sleeve John, who can offer her little but his eternal love and affection.

         Old school Hollywood used to tell this story countless times with sparkling dialogue and live wire performances from their leading man and ladies. Celine Song chooses to overthink and overwrite every single scene in the film, slowing the story down to a muddled crawl. After awhile, film's three characters sound like they're providing DVD commentary on what they're doing instead of acting out the story. 

        It's bad enough that Song slows her movie down to a crawl, but what really puts the nail in the coffin is the monotone performance of Dakota Johnson.

         Pascal and Evans have charm and charisma to spare, while Johnson's very limited range is painful to behold and she sucks the life out of the film playing a role clearly constructed for someone with acting chops.....like a Florence Pugh or Alicia Vikander. (An actual skilled performance might have at least given this stillborn movie something close to pulse.....)

         We'll admit Celine Song has serious essential points to make here.....about how the pursuit of moneyed success fuels today's modern relationships, as opposed to the simple primal quest for pure love. But she makes her film a lifeless, dry academic lecture.....more likely to put us to sleep than engage us with the story. 

         A waste of time nothingburger whose aspirations to high art fall flat. And Johnson's in desperate need of an acting coach.

         Zero stars (0).

         

       

'MURDER BIMBO'......A VILE POLITICIAN MEETS HIS MOST UNLIKELY ASSASSIN.....

 Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack (2026)

     Who could possibly resist that title and the whole premise? A sex worker recruited to assassinate a rising right-wing politician? Visions of a wild, crazy reading thrill ride danced in my head.......promising a tasty mashup of feminist rage and power colliding with all our turbulent current events.

     Not quite what I ever expected though......

     What we got in reality came across as 90 percent verbose, at times impenetrable literary fiction. All of it's narrated by the unidentified Murder Bimbo herself who over the course of the book's three acts, proves herself to be the world's most dedicated Unreliable Narrator. In a few sparse, occasional sections, the book crawls out of our Murder Bimbo's' morass of yakety-yak to entertain us with scenes of her recruitment and preparation by a small collection of men who may or may not be government agents, neo-Nazis or both. One thing remains certain - that the death of the loathsome politico (only referred to as Meat Neck) with his dangerous views, rampant misogyny and history of sexual assault, would make the world a better, safer place without him in it. . Especially in light of Ms. Bimbo's previous, ugly encounter with him.

     To be fair to author Rebecca Novack, there are more than a few passages when her prose truly takes flight, Our conflicted narrator, Murder Bimbo, sometimes takes us right into the very essence of her multi-faceted personality and how she sees the world at large (and vice versa) And we can hardly blame her for her tenuous grasp of the truth, existing amid the divisive, combative world she's trying to survive in. There's some undeniably brilliant, quotable writing that erupts on these pages from time to time, which explains why I felt I couldn't rate the book anything above or below 3 stars.

     An adventurous, iconoclastic read, that's for sure. But demanding patience to experience and appreciate. And nobody should let that title and description seduce them into thinking they're in for some kind of suspenseful, thrill-a-minute whoop-dee-doo. Not that kind of a book

     3 stars (***)..

'KEEPER OF LOST CHILDREN'.....THE HEARTBREAKING STORY OF POST WORLD WAR 2 ORPHANS.....

  Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson (2026)

     This one will hit you hard with its wide range of storytelling, dramatic force and ultimately tug on your heartstrings without mercy.

     Author Sadeqa Johnson casts a powerful light on the plight of mixed race children, fathered by black American soldiers amid the demolished cities and society of post World War 2 Germany. Scorned as outcasts, these white German mothers and their reviled babies fell into a tortured existence that left the children uncared for, unloved and abandoned into orphanage or even worse, the streets. .

     The scope of this epic tragedy slowly but assuredly unwinds through the narratives of three different generations of black characters. In 1951 Germany, Army wife Ethel Gathers , shaken by her visits to one of the orphanages, becomes a relentless advocate and champion for the mixed raced children. She becomes a very public and beloved figure as she cuts through mountains of red tape to arranges for black American families to adopt the children.

     In 1965 Maryland, teen farm girl Sophie secures a scholarship to a enter a exclusive highly rated private school as one of its few few black students accepted. There she not only deals with the vile bigotry and bullying of white students, she discovers that in Ethel Gathers' crusade, she may uncover the clouded mysteries of her own birth and childhood. And in 1948 Philadelphia, young Ozzie Phillips, with a hot temper sometimes aggravated by alcohol, enters the post war Army as new recruit. Shipped off to a devastated Germany Ozzie, like many other lonely soldiers, falls into an ill fated relationship with a young German girl, Jenka.

     Every one of these separate narratives is told with equal compelling fervor that kept me rapidly turning the pages to find out what happens to all three of these vividly drawn characters. And in the book's last third, when it's made clear how their lives will intersect and collide, there are more than a few sequences designed to leave readers blinking back tears..

     Outstanding in every regard, and telling a story that demands to be heard, 'Keeper of Lost Children' is the epitome of 5 star ' must read right away'. book. (*****).

'ANTIHERO'.......ORPHAN X FACES A MORAL CRISIS IN HIS LATEST QUEST FOR VENGEFUL JUSTICE....

 Antihero by Gregg Hurwitz (2026

     Sensational news for all of us who follow the amazing (and infinitely brutal) adventures of freelance righter-of-wrongs Evan Smoak.......I think this one's the best yet because the emotional stakes are raised higher than ever before.

     Evan (a.k.a. 'Orphan X', a.k.a. The Nowhere Man), walked away from his lethal profession as an ultra-trained Black Ops assassin for top secret government sanctioned missions......(you know, those ones that everybody in charge disavows and never heard of.)

     Now he wanders the world as a Knight Errant, a supremely efficient Paladin awaiting the the calls of any poor soul besieged by evil and with no one else to turn to. Through the oddest of circumstances, fate has put him in the path of Anca, an innocent young woman suffering from debilitating seizures that leave her helpless and unconscious. When afflicted while riding a New York subway, she's abducted and repeatedly gang raped by four soulless, heartless men who record their many victims' agonies for thousands of users on a dark web porn network.

     Evan knows of this horrific event via an eyewitness to the abduction, a young girl 'guest' of his all-powerful Oligarch frenemy, Luke Davine. With Davine currently in the throes of his own nervous breakdown, Evan's forced to recruit his beloved but suffer-no-fools teen girl hacker Joey to control Davine's on-line empire while he brings Orphan X revenge down upon Anca's attackers.

     Here's where the book plunges Evan into an unique crisis that raises the bar for any future Orphan X missions Anca, a fiercely determined survivor guided by a strong moral compass, demands of Evan that he not wreak his usual eye-for-an-eye justice upon the men who tried to destroy her body and spirit. She wants legitimate justice and not wanton slaughter, which puts Evan into an internal struggle to bow to her wishes and still control the violent instincts that have ruled his life and actions since his tortured childhood.and warrior training.

And as Evan methodically tracks down the goons with the help of Joey's incredible computer skills, his paternal, protective instincts toward her grow ever stronger. As feisty, street smart and independent as Joey may be, Evan's heart aches as he can see her vulnerability, surrounded by a world of predators, like the ones who put Anca through sheer hell.

     I never dreamed I'd be describing an Orphan X thriller as heartbreaking and an emotional powerhouse, but there you have it.......as well as those hefty doses of bone crushing violence we've all come to expect from this series. An absolute 'don't miss'.

     5 stars (*****).