54 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ APRIL 6, 2020
Review_FICTION
her in the shoulder before Odessa shoots
him dead. Afterward, she thinks she sees
some presence leave Walt’s corpse. The
traumatized Odessa, after being placed
on restricted duty, takes a retired agent’s
suggestion to write Blackwood for help
understanding what she thought she saw.
Blackwood responds, revealing that Walt
was possessed by a violent supernatural
entity known as a Hollow One, and the
two set out to catch it before it can kill
again. The authors keep the tension high
throughout. Fans of Douglas Preston and
Lincoln Child’s Pendergast books will be
enthralled. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts
Entertainment. (June)The Swap
Robyn Harding. Scout, $16.99 trade paper
(320p) ISBN 978-1-9821-4176-9
Lonely, awkward high school senior
Low Morrison, one of the leads in this
convincing tale of obsession and celebrity
worship from Harding (The
Arrangement), becomes enchanted with
her school’s new pottery teacher, the
charismatic, beautiful Freya Light, who
has recently moved to Hawking, an
island in the Pacific Northwest with her
husband, a former hockey player who
accidentally paralyzed an opponent
during a game. The sports scandal also
ended Freya’s career as an Instagram
influencer, which she’s desperate to
regain. Flattered by Low’s adoration,
Freya shares her dark secrets with Low,
who believes they have a “soul connection.”
Low becomes uncontrollably jealous
when Freya gets close to Jamie Vincent,
who just moved to the island with her
husband, Brian, to heal emotionally after
an adoption scam. Following a night of
“magic mushrooms,” Freya suggests
swapping partners with the Vincents,
which has unexpected consequences. In
this intense character study, the veneer of
each person cracks, and Freya’s propensity
for violence erupts. Fans of psychological
thrillers will be satisfied. Agent: Joseph
Veltre, Gersh Agency. (June)Wonderland
Zoje Stage. Mulholland, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-
0-316-45849-8
In this tepid psychological thriller
with a paranormal slant from Stage (Baby
Teeth), 41-year-old Orla Bennett, anarrator of this highly enjoyable hardboiled
tale set in 1960s Texas from Edgar winner
Lansdale (Jane Goes North), has no qualms
about perpetrating serious crimes in his
pursuit of the American Dream. When
sent to repossess a Cadillac purchased by
Frank Craig, a rough, hard-drinking
brute who is “big enough to hunt tigers
with nothing but a bad attitude,” Ed falls
for Frank’s gorgeous if conniving wife,
Nancy. After acquiring the Cadillac for
himself, Ed and Nancy begin an affair,
and Ed soon sets his sights on attaining
part-ownership of Nancy’s drive-in movie
theater and pet cemetery. To achieve
this, he devises a crude plan to beat her
husband to death and stage his murder to
look like an accident so that Nancy can
claim Frank’s life insurance policy.
Unsurprisingly, nothing goes as planned,
and Ed’s hopes of a more prosperous
future prove as shoddy and pretentious as
the clunkers he sells. Populated with an
admirable array of laughable miscreants,
this droll, savage novel is vintage Lansdale.
The author’s storytelling powers remain
as strong as ever. Agent: Danny Baror,
Baror International. (July)★ The Hollow Ones
(The Blackwood Tapes #1)
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Grand
Central, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5387-6174-8
This horrifying series launch from del
Toro and Hogan (the Strain trilogy)
introduces occult investigator John
Blackwood, who maintains a mailbox in
Manhattan’s financial district, the repos-
itory for desperate requests for help.
When FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke and
her partner, Walt Leppo, visit the
Montclair, N.J., home of a graft inquiry
target, disgraced politician Cary Peters,
the pair find him in the midst of a mur-
derous rampage in which he fatally stabs
his estranged
wife and two
sons. Walt
manages to take
a knife from
Peters, but then
the FBI agent
inexplicably
attacks Peters’s
surviving child,
a nine-year-old
girl, stabbinggenerates painful hindsight for Mitch
about his life choices. Fans of sweeping
family epics will enjoy this dissection of
fame, sports, and the drive for connection.
(June)Colour of Things Unseen
Annee Lawrence. Aurora Metro, $26.95
(300p) ISBN 978-1-912430-17-8
Lawrence’s thoughtful debut probes
the mind and spirit of a somber Javanese
painter struggling to adapt to life in
Indonesia and Australia. After a sheltered
childhood in a small village in 1990s
Java, Adi wins a scholarship at a Sydney
art school. Once there, he is unsettled by
his peers’ outgoing personalities. Adi’s
Muslim faith also sets him apart, but his
politeness and talent as a painter gains
him new
friends, among
them Lisa
Davidson. They
fall in love and
marry, but the
relationship
becomes rocky
after Lisa chafes
against Adi’s
expectations
that she fill the
role of a proper Javanese wife, whose
purpose is to serve her husband and bear
children. Lisa, pursuing her own doctorate
in art history, isn’t ready to be a mother,
and Adi cannot grasp her perspective.
After years of marriage, Adi returns alone
to Indonesia in 2011, and Lisa eventually
follows. She soon learns more about the
world that created her husband’s beliefs.
Details of both Sydney and Java are
delightfully described through an artist’s
viewpoint (“freckled patterns of blue-grey
green in the roadside bush, the sun-split
muddy yellows and subtle hints of red and
pink”). This story of love and art impresses
by portraying the characters’ hard-won
success at bridging their cultural differ-
ences. (Self-published)Mystery/Thriller
More Better Deals
Joe R. Lansdale. Mulholland, $27 (272p)
ISBN 978-0-316-47991-2
Used car salesman Ed Edwards, the