Smart and sleek as the secrets slowly spill out.
In Lubitz’s (Breaking Free, 2011) thriller, a woman’s trial for murder puts numerous people in danger when it threatens to expose a covert government assassination.
Wilhelm Kronig, the former CIA deputy director, is determined to keep quiet about a buried 1969 experiment for a potent hypnotic drug. But 9/11 changes his mind. He tells the agency how to recover the supposedly destroyed formula and suggests using it for a black op to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Recently, however, participants from said experiment have killed their families and themselves on the day of their 60th birthdays. This doesn’t bode well for Alana Shannon, who shot hubby Steve in self-defense but can’t explain why he went gunning for her. She and an old flame, Environmental Protection Agency attorney Ryan Butler, know a little about the drug due to their involvement in a 1986 incident, which the CIA covered up. But building a legal defense based on that classified information is something the CIA won’t allow—even if it means making sure the witnesses don’t make it to trial. As the story progresses, Lubitz’s rapid-paced novel maintains suspense by sprinkling information like colors dabbled on the canvas of a slowly forming portrait. Much of the info is imparted by characters who, like Ryan, are reluctant or afraid to reveal everything at one time, so scenes are comprised largely of mere dialogue exchanges rather than action. Yet this doesn’t hold up the novel in the least, thanks to Lubitz’s intelligent writing and the story’s fresh, contemporary villains. Physical assaults or threats, for example, simply aren’t necessary when a well-spoken CIA agent can tell Ryan how easily the agency could frame him for treason. There’s likewise an ever present but veiled threat: computers or evidence go missing, while those people relevant to the trial either disappear or meet unfortunate accidents. This is the second book to feature Ryan and Alana, and Lubitz drops enough hints surrounding the 1986 event—in which Ryan killed a man to save Alana—to pique interest for his prior novel without spoiling or regurgitating the story. The coda goes on for a bit too long, but there’s an exhaustive wrap-up that includes elaborating on the birthday homicides and the ongoing bin Laden operation.
Smart and sleek as the secrets slowly spill out.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1491757734
Page Count: 328
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2015
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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