by David Downing ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2011
A wide canvas painted with broad strokes. What suspense there is lies in the protagonist’s endgame, with atomic secrets up...
The fourth in Downing’s World War II “station” series (Stettin Station, 2010, etc.) finds journalist-spy John Russell making a Faustian pact with the Russians poised to invade Berlin, where his girlfriend Effi and son Paul struggle to survive the Reich’s final days.
From roving SS squads intent on preventing desertion to bombardment and imminent invasion by Russian soldiers bent on rape and revenge, Berlin is fraught with danger for average citizens—far worse for underground operatives like Effi who help smuggle Jews to safety or for German soldiers like Paul, at the front under heavy fire. All Russell knows is his family is trapped in Berlin and that Eisenhower has promised Berlin to the Russians, so if he’s going to get there, it’s going to be in a Russian tank. He flies to Berlin where his requests to be attached as a journalist to the Red Army unit are rebuffed, but he manages to get the authorities’ attention all the same. Eventually, the Russians agree to place him on a team searching Berlin for German atomic secrets. He’s parachuted into the surrounding environs with no idea how he’ll find his girlfriend and son, even less how he’ll avoid liquidation at the hands of the Russians once their mission ends and he represents a liability. He can’t know that Effi, harboring a Jewish orphan, has run afoul of the authorities, or even whether she and Paul are alive. Downing’s characters are a bit thin and given to disingenuous reflection on the history they’re witnessing. Certain turns of events are a little convenient, and his true mission, to save his loved ones, without clear direction and floundering in the chaos, lacks tension. The main attraction is the tragic mis-en-scène of a once-beautiful city undergoing the ravages of modern warfare, a wide-angle synthesis of scenes and snapshots from the history books.
A wide canvas painted with broad strokes. What suspense there is lies in the protagonist’s endgame, with atomic secrets up his sleeve and his loved ones’ lives in peril.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56947-917-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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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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