A diverting tale of an exciting, harrowing quest for a centuries-old fortune.
In Leng’s thriller, the search for long-hidden gold puts treasure hunters in unexpected peril.
Jack Sullivan makes money leading private tours in Pennsylvania. If he could, he would devote all his time to his obsession: searching for Major General Edward Braddock’s legendary buried gold. (During the 18th-century French and Indian War, the British officer ordered Captain Thomas Clarke to stash the army’s payroll.) In the present day, a construction crew in Maryland unearths a wooden barrel containing, among other things, Clarke’s journal. Thanks to Jack’s connection to Emma Wilson (she’s his ex-fiancee), the assistant director and curator at the Museum of American History, he gets first crack at the document. Clarke left at least one coded message that points Jack to a marker, one of several that may ultimately lead to Braddock’s treasure. Of course, Jack can’t do this alone, and his best friend Steve Johnson (who saved his life when the two were in the Navy) joins him on the mission. Surprisingly, Emma lends a hand as well, despite Jack’s obsessive hunt for the gold being the reason she broke off their engagement. They debate how much to tell others—even potential allies, like the descendant of a French officer tied to Clarke and the director of a local Maryland museum. Jack and his friends aren’t the only ones looking; they repeatedly spot a hooded individual and the same pickup truck in their vicinity. Things quickly escalate as a break-in, an act of vandalism, and an assault make abundantly clear the lengths to which their unknown rivals are willing to go.
Leng layers his first foray into fiction with generous amounts of American history. The plot intermittently bounces between different times, portraying events from the Battle of Fort Duquesne to Clarke and fellow soldiers braving such hazardous terrain as a raging river to hide the payroll and markers. While Braddock appears in some scenes, the true focus is on Clarke, who showcases cleverness and tenacity as both a leader and an officer following orders. The present-day cast hews to a steady routine of painstaking searches and lighthearted downtime. The latter allows for Steve to find romance as well as the possibility of Jack and Emma reigniting their old flame (“Although she believed they were friends now, some uncertainty was in her mind. They moved to the beat of the music, and she lost herself in the moment. He whispered, ‘You’re still the best dance partner I’ve had’”). Some of the humor falls flat (usually when someone trying to lighten the mood), but the quips and banter between the friends conveys a welcome kinship. Readers expecting the treasure hunters to crack increasingly baffling codes may be disappointed, as the bulk of the story consists of them moving from place to place looking for markers. Nevertheless, the tension weighs heavily in a search that involves scuba diving to underwater caverns and squeezing into cramped spaces. The final act further amplifies the danger and throws in a few surprises as the novel winds down.
A diverting tale of an exciting, harrowing quest for a centuries-old fortune.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9798335212397
Page Count: 424
Publisher: White Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
