From the author of the breakout thriller Every Last Fear, comes the electrifying new novel about a pair of small-town murders fifteen years apart—and the ties that bind them.
“The night was expected to bring tragedy.” So begins one of the most highly-anticipated thrillers of 2022.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.
Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive.
Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words. . . . “Goodnight, pretty girl.”
In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.
Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
A man sits behind a cluttered desk. He wears thick glasses and keeps blinking, giving his eyes an insect quality. They hang back as the department head speaks with Walter, explaining why they’re here. Under his breath Atticus asks Keller, “You ever see the movie Office Space?”
“There’s only one thing sneakier than criminals.” “What’s that?” “Teenage girls.”
Who came up with all these acronyms? They sound like jobs on a porn set.
My Review:
This chilling tale kept me guessing and on edge with multi-layered storylines that were maddeningly paced, cunningly textured, taut with tension, and laced with clever snark. I was enthralled and in awe of this wordsmith’s devilishly wily word voodoo and engaging writing style. Alex Finley has a new fangirl.
The characters were an odd bunch of complex personalities who were more than a bit fractured yet compelling and enticing. I was sucked into an oddly disconcerting, active, and prickly vortex of tension, tragedy, humor, and intrigue while the little pea in my brain was feverishly devising and tossing out wilder and wilder theories as the complications and twists mounted to higher and higher levels of crisscrossing deception. I’ve never enjoyed being so wrong.
Alex Finlay is the pseudonym of an author who lives in Washington, D.C. His 2021 breakout thriller, Every Last Fear, was an Indie Next pick, a LibraryReads selection, an Amazon Editor’s Best Thriller, as well as a CNN, Newsweek, E!, BuzzFeed, Business Week, Goodreads, Parade, PopSugar, and Reader’s Digest best or most anticipated thriller of the year. Alex’s work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and optioned for film and television.
The Night Shift sounds awesome. I want to read this one. Great review.
This is my kind of read, I will have to check it out. Great review.