by Joseph H. Baskin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 2016
A slow immersion into chaos that’s torture for the protagonist but sheer enjoyment for readers.
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In Baskin’s debut thriller, a prison psychiatrist becomes a patsy for a white supremacist gang leader looking for a way out of jail.
Dr. Jojo Black sees his new job at Wampanoag State Hospital, run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, as a definite challenge. He’d make more money in a private psychiatric practice, but he prefers working with criminals despite the fact that his first patient at WSH nearly attacks him for not providing him with oxycodone. Jojo’s predecessor boils the job down to separating the truly mentally ill inmates from those who are simply faking it, because the state hospital is considered a vacation compared with maximum security. Hard-to-read patient Lester Manson, leader of the white supremacy group White Dawn, resides in the high-security unit known as “the Shoe.” Jojo thinks that Lester seems “pleasant and calm,” contrary to his own boss’s warnings. But soon after Jojo settles into a routine and starts dating social worker Margot, the trouble begins. Lester persuades Margot to sneak him a cellphone, and he uses this criminal act to blackmail Jojo into doing his bidding. At first, the psychiatrist merely ensures that a few select inmates remain at the hospital. But as rumors of a gang war heat up (White Dawn vs. Los Reyes), some people outside WSH, including a U.S. Marshal, confront Jojo, convinced that he’s helping Lester plan a prison break. In the end, the psychiatrist may have to choose between telling the truth or aiding in Lester’s escape. Baskin’s novel has a worthy buildup before spinning off into a gleefully complex conspiracy. There are numerous characters with agendas: some want Lester free, some want him to stay right where he is, and others apparently want him dead. The tale is suspenseful right from the opening, which shows Jojo in the middle of a prison riot before flashing back to his relatable first-day jitters. Still, the book’s villain isn’t quite the mastermind that other characters make him out to be; Jojo’s boss, for example, asserts that Lester can get into a seasoned clinician’s head, but what he actually does is less manipulation than basic intimidation, sometimes involving physical threats. On the plus side, Jojo comes across as a smart man who, despite his stumbles, isn’t as naïve as some suggest.
A slow immersion into chaos that’s torture for the protagonist but sheer enjoyment for readers.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5347-0256-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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