Publishers Weekly
04/24/2023
In this middling thriller from Walker (American Girl), Det. Elise Sutton is in a Connecticut department store when shots ring out. Near the dressing rooms, she spies an armed 20-something man taking aim at a tall, frightened man. Elise—a cold case investigator—kills the gunman before he can claim a single life, but despite being hailed as a hero, she’s wracked with guilt for doing so. The man she saved doesn’t give a statement, so Elise seeks him out and is relieved when his account vindicates her actions. She soon discovers, however, that the man started stalking her post-shooting, and nearly everything he told her was a lie, including his name. When he begins threatening Elise’s husband, police partner, and daughters, Elise realizes he won’t stop unless she makes him. Walker intercuts Elise’s first-person-present narration with chapters detailing an investigation into human remains found in a hunting shelter’s cremation oven, though the subplot feels awkwardly shoehorned in. And though Elise’s stalker is terrifying, her reactions to his escalations strain credibility, blunting the story’s impact. Walker has done much better. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group. (June)
New York Times bestselling author of Behind Closed B. A. Paris
Finely crafted characters, great plotting, and so much tension you’ll have trouble catching your breath. This is Wendy Walker at her best!”
New York Times Book Review
Chilling psychological acuity…Part of the fun is figuring out how everything ties together in the end.”
award-winning and internationally bestselling auth Jennifer Hillier
I couldn’t put this book down once I started. Thoroughly enjoyable from the first page to the shocking conclusion, Wendy Walker’s What Remains is an addictive, immersive, propulsive thriller. Not only is Walker at the top of her game, she is absolutely one of the genre’s best.”
AudioFile
Gabra Zackman and Peter Ganim share the double first-person narration of Wendy Walker’s new thriller…The performances are smooth and accomplished.”
New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney
Perfectly plotted and beautifully written, I was gripped from the first page.”
New York Times bestselling author of Searching for Jean Kwok
In addition to being a heart-pounding page-turner, Wendy Walker’s What Remains is an exploration of love and fidelity and of the secrets that bind us and tear us apart. The engine that keeps us riveted is not simply the masterful plot but our empathy for Walker’s complex characters as they test the fragility of the ties that tether them to not only the ones they love but to their own identities. A gorgeous and compelling emotional thriller.”
New York Times bestselling author of The Lies I Te Julie Clark
A twisted game of obsession and secrets, What Remains starts with a bang—literally—and doesn’t let you go until the final, exquisite resolution. This book is Wendy Walker at her best!”
New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in A. J. Finn
‘What would you do?’ asks this searing thriller in its opening pages. And then, just a few chapters later, another question, more unnerving: ‘What would you do now?’ Most novels would’ve quit by this point, but most novels aren’t written by Wendy Walker, whose earlier stories of psychological suspense—humane, inquisitive, and sinister, often in the same sentence—showcased a rare talent. In What Remains, Walker smashes that showcase to rubble. I can’t recall the last time a thriller kept me so alert, as though the muzzle of a gun were pressed to my temple. While the novel rotates through assorted genres (cop drama, psychological suspense, stalker scares—each meticulously evoked and arranged), this is from beginning to end absolutely splendid storytelling, a book to entertain, to immerse, and to challenge.”
internationally bestselling author of 56 Days Catherine Ryan Howard
Incredibly tense, utterly authentic, and endlessly intriguing—I dare you to put this book down.”
USA Today bestselling author of You Can’t Ca Catherine McKenzie
What Remains begins with a (literal) bang and doesn’t let up until the final shocking conclusion. Elise Sutton is our perfect guide through this labyrinth—tough but vulnerable, smart but a bit lost in the plot of her own life. Walker immediately made me want to know what was happening, but I never guessed THAT ending! A tour de force.”
International bestselling author of 56 Days Catherine Ryan Howard
Incredibly tense, utterly authentic and endlessly intriguing - I dare you to put this book down.”
AudioFile - JULY 2023
Gabra Zackman and Peter Ganim share the double first-person narration of Wendy Walker's new thriller in which Elise, a policewoman traumatized during a line-of-duty shooting, is stalked by a mysterious witness to the event. Meanwhile, her partner, Rowan, still recovering from wartime PTSD, is working the case from a different angle. We hear a great deal about stages of trauma recovery and what happens if you try to skip a stage or ignore therapeutic wisdom or lie to your psychiatrist. Some feels more like padding than plot or character development, or perhaps the text just needed a sharp red pencil, but the performances are smooth and accomplished, and Walker gets us where she wants to go without killing off anyone we've come to care about. B.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
