The night shift /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the author of the breakout thriller Every Last Fear , comes Alex Finlay's electrifying next novel The Night Shift , about a pair of small-town murders fifteen years apart--and the ties that bind them.

One of the Best or Most Anticipated Books of 2022: Newsweek * PopSugar * E! News * Goodreads * Book Riot * BookBub * The Nerd Daily * SheReads * Novel Suspects * Crime by the Book * London Times

A Library Reads Selection--Best Book Voted By Librarians for March 2022

"The night was expected to bring tragedy." So begins one of the most highly-anticipated thrillers in recent years.

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 New Jersey, four teenagers working late at the store are attacked. Only one inexplicably survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again.

Fifteen years later, more teenage employees are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive.

In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who's forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who's convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller who must delve into the secrets of both nights--stirring up memories of teen love and lies--to uncover the truth about murders on the night shift.

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 Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Fifteen years ago, someone murdered four young night-shift employees of a Blockbuster store and left a fifth for dead. The police arrested a local teen but soon released him because of insufficient evidence. Then he disappeared. Now an almost identical crime has taken place at a local ice cream shop--three night-shift employees killed, with one survivor, a teen in foster care. No one can deny the similarities between the two events. Ella, the lone survivor of the Blockbuster murders, is now a therapist who's asked to question the survivor of the Dairy Creamery murders, a high school student named Jesse Duval. As the investigation continues, Ella and Jesse discover they have more in common than being survivors. The public defender, Chris Ford, also has secrets about his connection to the Blockbuster case. As eight-months-pregnant FBI agent Sarah Keller works the Dairy Creamery case with local law enforcement, she discovers links between the two sensational murders. Will more people die before they discover the killer's identity? VERDICT Fans of dual-timeline thrillers with intricately connected characters will love Finlay's (Every Last Fear) fast-paced tale that delivers one stunning surprise after another.--K.L. Romo

Publishers Weekly Review

The pseudonymous Finlay's strong sophomore effort (after 2021's Every Last Fear) opens on New Year's Eve 1999 at a Linden, N.J., Blockbuster Video store, where the manager and three teenage employees are murdered; only a fourth employee, Ella Monroe, survives. The chief suspect, high school student Vince Whitaker, disappears. Fifteen years later, the words the killer whispered as he stabbed Ella, "Goodnight, pretty girl," still haunt her. When the Linden high school principal asks Ella, now a therapist, to counsel student Jessica Duvall, the only survivor of a copycat crime at a local ice cream store, she reluctantly agrees to do so. Thrust back into her nightmare, Ella struggles to help Jessica, who's fixated on the Blockbuster slayings. When Jessica is charged with the ice cream store murders, her public defender has reason to conceal his own ties to Whitaker. Meanwhile, as an FBI agent and a Linden police officer investigate, small-town secrets from the past and the present start to emerge. Finlay does a fine job weaving the tangled lives and crimes together in a suspenseful tale that's marred only by a forced conclusion. Thriller fans will eagerly await Finlay's next. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary. (Mar.)

Booklist Review

"Good night, pretty girl," the killer whispered as he pushed the knife into the girl. It was New Year's Eve, 1999. Five young people staffing a Blockbuster video store were slaughtered. The killer was never caught. Suddenly the novel jumps 15 years. Four teenage girls are attacked. One survives. She remembers hearing, before passing out, "Good night . . . " A chilling setup for a creepy thriller with links to a sinister past, and for a time, that's what we get. The girl who heard the first "Good night" survived and re-enters the story as, appropriately, a therapist counseling the new victim. With all cylinders burning on the hunt for a serial killer, the story takes an odd segue, briefly becoming a suburban slice of life with drivers ed, softball teams, and diaper bags, albeit one colored by depression: even a cocktail pianist must brood over the rotten turn his career has taken. Everything is wrapped up in the horror-movie finale, in which we learn the meaning of "Good night." A bit bifurcated, but it has its moments.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Alex Finlay lives in Washington, D.C. and is the author of critically-acclaimed novels, including the 2021 breakout, Every Last Fear. His work has appeared on numerous best-of-the-year lists, been published in seventeen languages around the world, and is currently in development for a major television limited series.