A colorful, brisk drama that grows increasingly improbable.
In small-town Texas, a woman with evidence of city corruption goes missing, and her boyfriend desperately tries to find her.
In Horsehead Crossing, Texas, Tacy Vernon works for the Economic Development Corporation, an organization that disburses grants and loans to small businesses. She opposes a business plan in which the EDC would cosign a loan for the local airport, a dishonest scheme that avoids asking citizens to vote on the measure. As a result, Mayor Turner Cam, and City Manager Aaron Foster, plot to first relieve her of her job and then to simply take over the EDC’s board, as well as manipulate the local media’s ability to cover their tracks. Tacy suspects both are falsifying financial records to make the airport deal look more profitable than it is, and that Baxter Whitey, the patriarch of the city’s most affluent and powerful family, is involved. When Tacy suddenly disappears, her boyfriend, Chase Haven, a chicken farmer and gun dealer, suspects foul play, and conducts his own investigation. In this action-packed—if overheated —novel by Ivey, the deeper Chase digs, the more he realizes the city is mired in dirty dealings, and the more likely it is that Tacy is out of her depth. The author paints a lively portrait of small-town life in the American Southwest (“‘Lord, no,’ Chase said. He immediately knew that it must be the King Ranch Casserole made with tuna instead of chicken”), one in which a handful of wealthy families commandeer the democratic process. The plot, however, unfolds with simply too many gratuitous twists and turns, each new layer adding to the general implausibility of it all. Moreover, Chase seems more like a fictional creation than a real human being, a pastiche of stock paperback characters. Still, Ivey’s eventful tale is never boring, and readers will keep turning the pages until the explosive ending.
A colorful, brisk drama that grows increasingly improbable.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798998522000
Page Count: 218
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2025
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
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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