by Andrew Klavan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2001
Klavan gives short shrift to some potentially fascinating characters, and Cal and Marie’s position in the town is never...
Filled with portent and small-town secrets, Klavan’s latest (after True Crime, 1995, etc.) takes the high road and gets where it’s going without too many shortcuts.
Connecticut-based Cal Bradley is a psychiatrist who works at a respectable little mental health clinic commonly known as the Manor. His wife Marie is a divinely stoic and devoted spouse and mother to their three children. But Klavan tells us most of this only later. First, he introduces Cal to a new patient: Peter Blue, a 19-year-old who was arrested after hitting his girlfriend, trying to burn down a church, and pointing a gun at the police chief who came to check out the fire. Cal is called in after Peter (“gentle, dreamy, hard-working, religious”) has tried to kill himself in his holding cell. Under Cal’s care, Peter starts to open up his passionately religious inner world. His explanations for his violent behavior, though, don’t quite add up for Cal, who feels more than a little affinity with this oddly affecting teenager. While trying to uncover Peter’s layers of denial and evasion, Cal goes walking in the woods near a spot Peter described as being his favorite place to commune with God. There, Cal sees a woman strongly resembling Marie in the clutches of a sinewy, dark-haired man. Full of insecurity from the get-go (“I’m on the short side, narrow, soft. With a bland face under thinning darkish hair”), Cal feels the foundation of his perfect life start to crack. There’s something more to Peter than he can figure out—all the other teenagers in the Manor treat Peter as if he were a benevolent Messiah—and now he’s thinking there’s more to his wife than he had thought possible . . . .
Klavan gives short shrift to some potentially fascinating characters, and Cal and Marie’s position in the town is never quite established—but these are relatively minor quibbles in a piece of professional suspense that knows well what to leave to the imagination.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2001
ISBN: 0-765-30215-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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