At times incoherent and simplistic, but extremely entertaining and a complete break from the formulaic crime thriller.
A compelling, rambling novel about a lifelong rivalry between a disciplined teacher and members of a murderous outlaw biker gang who fight battles from the sunny South African coast to the damp tube stations of England.
Reid’s first novel focuses on the life of Spencer, an experienced South African teacher whose life unravels after he’s suddenly fired from a small German-oriented country school. Spencer quickly loses his home and all connections to his wife and son. He finds casual employment as a substitute teacher in England. He begins drinking, playing pool and taking on minimum wage stockroom jobs for extra cash. To his regret, he encounters Hood, a former student who has become a drug runner for the Snake bike gang. Spencer attempts to evade Hood and his manipulative games, but he’s drawn into entanglements with Hood’s boss, the evil and unpredictable Xanthye. Reid’s story is vivid, colorful and imaginative. Reid draws on his personal experiences of teaching in South Africa and England, and he provides unique insight into the lives of bikers and teachers on the South African coast. Yet his story suffers from being overly allegorical and unrealistic. Reid paints Spencer as the voice of reason: a crusader against liberal culture, political correctness and drug use. Spencer is so tied up with his own past that he chooses not to quit teaching or to dismantle Xanthye’s wild gang. Instead, the teacher goes on long tirades to his best friend and escapes into memories of his high school days. Reid’s story is difficult to read since he tells it as an unordered set of memories. One particularly disturbing aspect of the story is the fact that Spencer forms a close, almost sexual bond with Venus, a rambunctious teenager. Venus is the daughter of Vicki, a beautiful, unattainable Afrikaner blonde from Spencer’s youth. Venus and the reader often question whether Spencer is Venus’ biological father.
At times incoherent and simplistic, but extremely entertaining and a complete break from the formulaic crime thriller.Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456774653
Page Count: 276
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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