Readers should delight in the characters’ budding romance and the international locales.
The author’s debut adventure novel follows a woman’s global trek as she stumbles on romance, an inherited fortune and a scheme to steal a painting.
Canadian restaurant consultant Claudia flies to Geneva to pay respects to her late and much beloved uncle Renato. She’s happy to be included in the will, receiving the bulk of her uncle’s wealth, but she soon spots a blonde woman following her, and someone else ransacks Renato’s apartment, as well as her home back in Canada. It isn’t long before she’s accosted. Evidently, some dodgy individuals want her final gift from Renato—a painting that doesn’t seem to have much value. There are allusions to espionage in Levi Garlick’s book: Claudia’s friend and business partner, Suzy, makes a couple of James Bond references, and Claudia’s love interest, Michael, is a British MI5 agent. But the story dwells more on romance than investigating terrorists. In that regard, Michael’s charms and good looks are touted a bit excessively. It’s obvious well before he meets Claudia that they’ll become a couple. But Levi Garlick develops their relationship solidly. They don’t immediately hop into bed, and the British agent is steadfastly professional in keeping his new love safe, especially after their meeting on the street leads to a kidnapping and a hail of bullets. One of the novel’s most notable assets is the cultivation of Claudia’s paranoia; looted rooms are simply “weird,” but ultimately, she thinks people are trailing or watching her, and she’s often panicky when she wakes up alone. A palpable threat makes her paranoia reasonable: A man who’s eluded Interpol in nonextradition France easily finds her in other countries, including Italy and the U.K. A first-rate subplot—her uncle’s journal, set around World War II, reveals where Renato’s love of art may have originated—enhances the story, as does the occasional humor: Claudia’s pounding chicken while prepping for dinner sends Scotland Yard’s Gael scurrying into the room with gun drawn.
Readers should delight in the characters’ budding romance and the international locales.Pub Date: April 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481966320
Page Count: 444
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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