I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
You Can Go Home Now
by Michael Elias
Published by HarperCollins on June 23, 2020
Genres: Psychological Thrillers
Pages: 266
Format: Hardcover
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In this smart, relevant, unputdownable psychological thriller, a woman cop is on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own.
“My name is Nina Karim. I am a single thirty-one-year-old woman who likes cats, Ryan Reynolds movies, beautiful sunsets, walking on a wintry beach holding hands with a tall, caring, lightly bearded third-wave feminist. Yeah, right.”
Nina is a tough Queens detective with a series of cold case homicides on her desk – men whose widows had the same alibi: they were living in Artemis, a battered women’s shelter, when their husbands were killed.
Nina goes undercover into Artemis. Though she is playing the victim, she’s anything but. Nina knows about violence and the bullies who rely on it because she’s experienced it in her own life.
In this heart-pounding thriller Nina confronts the violence of her own past in Artemis where she finds solidarity with a community of women who deal with abusive and lethal men in their own way.
For the women living in Artemis there is no absolute moral compass, there is the law and there is survival. And, for Nina, who became a cop so she could find the man who murdered her father, there is only revenge.
You Can Go Home Now by Michael Elias is a fast-paced mystery filled with deceit, revenge, and thrills.
Will Nina avenge her family? And if she does, will she lose herself?
Nina Karim
Nina is our main character and point of view. She is out for revenge. Nina has become a police detective to find the man that killed her father. This rage that is inside of her will only be settled when that person has been eliminated. But will it? Are this anger and that incident what defines her as a person?
I loved Nina’s compassion and outrage at what she does in her chosen profession. However, even though she wears a badge, she does what she wants. Nina has friends in some extraordinary places, but they all suit her personality. Perhaps the whole vigilante scenario fits her.
The Mysteries
Yes, there is more than one mystery. The first and closest to Nina’s heart is the person who murdered her father when she was a teenager. She has been looking for this person for years. The problem is even as a police detective; she doesn’t have access to all of the information needed to crack the case.
The second case is the murder of a man that threatened to kill his wife. The wife has a solid, albeit as she was in a shelter for abused women at the time of the death. Nina, while investigating this case, finds two others where a similar scenario happened with the same shelter. Coincidence, Nina thinks not. So, she goes undercover to figure it out.
Then we have Mr. McDermott, who shows up and confesses to crimes that he didn’t commit. He is quite different. Yet, Nina is nice and, for some reason, listens to what he has to say.
I also like the tie in for the title, You Can Go Home Now. I won’t tell you what it is, but believe me, you won’t miss it.
Five Stars
I love this book. I will admit at first look at the title and cover I wasn’t sure, but once I got into Nina’s psyche, I was hooked. Mr. Elias does a fantastic job walking us through how Nina’s father’s murder affected her family and her individually. It makes you wonder about all the transparency around public employees and how other people commit murder and justify it as righteous because the person they murdered doesn’t live the life the murderer thinks they should.
Anyway, You Can Go Home Now by Michael Elias is definitely five stars. I highly recommend this book to everyone who likes thrillers. Perhaps it will even open your eyes to other things.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of You Can Go Home Now by Michael Elias.
Until the next time,
This Guest Review is for Baroness’ Book Trove.
About Michael Elias
Michael Elias is an award-winning writer, actor, and director who has written film, television, theatre, and fiction.
His upcoming novel, You Can Go Home Now, is a timely and addictive psychological thriller featuring a female cop on the hunt for a killer while battling violent secrets of her own. The book will be published by HarperCollins in the U.S. and by Editions du Masque in France in June 2020. He is also the author of The Last Conquistador, published by Open Road Media.
Michael Elias was born and raised in upstate New York, moving to New York City after graduating from St. John’s College in Annapolis to pursue a career in acting. He was a member of the Living Theatre (The Brig) and acted at The Judson Poets Theatre, La MaMa, and Caffé Chino. Elias transitioned to Hollywood and with Frank Shaw wrote the screenplay for The Frisco Kid starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, then Envoyez les Violons with Eve Babitz and began a long partnership with Rich Eustis. Together, they wrote the screenplays for Serial, Young Doctors in Love, and created Head of the Class a television series for ABC, partially based on Elias’ experience as a high school teacher in New York City. Elias also worked with Steve Martin, a collaboration that included material for Martin’s comedy albums, network TV specials, and the screenplay for The Jerk.
Elias wrote and directed Showtime’s Lush Life with Forrest Whitaker and Jeff Goldblum. He was nominated for Best Director at The Cable Ace Awards that year, and the TV movie has become a jazz film classic. His semi-autobiographical play about a small hotel in upstate New York was directed by Paul Mazursky, ran for four months in Los Angeles, with the LA Weekly naming The Catskill Sonata one of the best ten plays of the year.
Michael Elias lives in Los Angeles and Paris.
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