The Perfect Plan

Tension permeates the relationship between troubled Liam and his big brother, Drew, a political hopeful for whom he quietly takes care of dirty business. Then one day Liam sails over the edge and kidnaps a woman who works for Drew. After the New York Timesbest-selling Finding Jake.

April 22, 2019
Bestseller Reardon (The Real Michael Swann) shifts between past and present in this gripping psychological thriller about two brothers, Liam and Drew Brennan, who concoct an outrageous kidnapping plot. As a boy, Drew taught younger brother Liam how to tie his shoes, as shown in the sunny prologue. The tone darkens in the main story line, in which the adult Liam kidnaps Lauren Branch, a staffer for Drew’s Delaware gubernatorial campaign. Sections devoted to Liam’s recollections of their childhood and adolescence gradually reveal their mother’s descent into alcoholism and their father’s cruelty, expressed both physically and emotionally. The intention of the kidnapping plot, as conceived by Drew, was to allow him to rescue Lauren, thus becoming a hero and propelling him to an electoral victory, but Liam has his own variation in mind and a partner that Drew knows nothing about. Liam, despite being a broken man, is still capable of surprising everyone. Through this complicated protagonist, Reardon takes readers on a memorable excursion into a struggling soul. Agent: Stephanie Rostan, Levine Greenberg Literary.

April 15, 2019
Abused from childhood by his monstrous father, Liam Brennan becomes involved in a complicated abduction scheme devised by his manipulative older brother, Drew, a candidate for Delaware governor. Drew, who married into a rich political family, has concocted a plan to have Lauren, his campaign manager (and mistress), kidnapped by Liam, who has overcompensated for feelings of weakness by acting as his brother's muscle. At times, that has involved violence. In this case, Drew hopes to draw sympathy votes by standing by his screwed-up sibling after Lauren is dramatically "rescued" from the cabin where Liam stashed her. Little goes as planned, for the characters or the reader. Liam begins scheming to escape his personal history, which is also darkened by the sordid mistreatment and death of his alcoholic mother, and Reardon begins toying with the underpinnings of the plot. The author likely would have fared better with one less stab of misdirection and a father with more than one dimension. And though this is not a political thriller, the election shenanigans are badly undercooked. But the novel is never less than gripping in its detailing of the sadistic treatment received by Liam and his dear, beautiful mother and the ruinous imprint it left on them. Drew is hardly in the clear, psychologically. "We're in this together, brother," he says, oblivious to the full truth of that statement. The nightmare keeps deepening right up to the end. Reardon's follow-up to The Real Michael Swann (2018) is another tense and entertaining thriller that keeps its hold on the reader even while indulging in excessive trickery.

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