She Treads Softly: The Method

Friday, December 19, 2025

The Method

The Method by Matthew Quirk
1/20/26; 416 pages
HarperCollins

The Method by Matthew Quirk is a highly recommended action-packed spy thriller featuring an actress who using her training for roles to defeat the bad guys. Set disbelief aside and enjoy the action movie plot.

Anna Vaughn usually plays the tough, tenacious doomed brunette character on the screen and in doing so she has put in countless hours training in how to fight, shoot, and defend herself. Her real life is much more pedestrian and quiet. After a difficult childhood, she is just trying to keep her career alive in order to take care of her younger sister. When her best friend Natalie goes missing after going out with a mysterious new man a few days earlier, Anna becomes suspicious that something foul is at play. Natalie dropped one clue which induced Anna to look for more clues in Natalie's apartment.

Once Anna is on the trail of Natalie it leads her into a dangerous world of wealthy oligarchs and spies, and requires her to use her training as an actor to read the room. It also puts FBI agent Kevin Matthews on her trail and he recruits her to go undercover following Natalie's trail. Soon all of Anna's training for acting roles becomes assets for the real life or death dangers she faces.

The Method is a well-written, entertaining thriller packed with action and danger as Anna faces well trained, professional antagonists. Sure, you have to set a gigantic dose of disbelief aside that Anna can fight back and win against all of these skilled goons twice her size while assessing a dangerous situation and figuring out what to do instantaneously. I am there for it every step of the way, with every clue she follows and every foe she defeats. Trying to save Natalie turns into much more as the plot unfolds.

Anna is a fully realized characters and her many strengths and a few weaknesses are on full display. She also has a vulnerable, caring side that propels her forward to do the right thing. I would love to see another outing of this intelligent, tenacious, tough, and vulnerable woman. Perhaps a movie adaptation?

The Method is a great choice for those who like action-packed thrillers with a female protagonist, and who can relish the action and plot in spite of it's incredulity at times. Thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.