A riveting historical novel, featuring brisk plotting and engaging characters.
LaCava’s well-researched, character-driven debut thriller tells a tale of CIA involvement in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
In late 1963, 45-year-old CIA operative Gabriel Haines is sick of the agency’s political wrangling and wants nothing more than to ride his horse and live a “simpler, freer kind of life.” So, when his wealthy Army buddy Tucker Massey suggests that he become the foreman at a cattle ranch in Texas Hill Country, he heads to Dallas for a meeting. A few days later, Haines has a job offer in hand and “a brand new stable, corral, and cowboy quarters” waiting for him. Unfortunately for Haines, however, he walks through Dealey Plaza on his way out of Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963, and he sees a Cuban exile lurking in the plaza as the assassination occurs. Haines heads to the Caribbean, believing that “his Company credentials” will make people think he was involved in the president’s death. Months later, Tucker reaches out to Haines and begs him to return, and Haines resigns his position in the CIA and heads to the ranch. There Haines interacts with Tucker’s pregnant mistress (who keeps a journal), his status-obsessed wife, his angry teenage daughter, his alienated half-brother and his lonely niece. It turns out that Tucker was part of Lyndon Johnson’s private, off-the-record security squad when Kennedy was shot, and now–President Johnson summons Tucker for an off-the-record mission. LaCava uses impressive historical research, effectively depicting the simmering burn of the civil rights movement and Vietnam, and demonstrates an astonishing ability to convey the feel of the era without becoming dry or preachy. At the same time, her portrayal of a spunky, motherless preteen girl, a neglected mistress and a world-weary spy are realistic and never stereotypical. Her measured use of imagery also vividly evokes locations across Texas and Mississippi, “where silvery moss dripped from the oak trees like the beards of old men.”
A riveting historical novel, featuring brisk plotting and engaging characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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