An intoxicating story that examines the elusive nature of truth.
A writer, tormented over his daughter’s kidnapping, becomes an abductee himself while traveling to Morocco in Bidulka’s (When the Saints Go Marching In, 2013, etc.) thriller.
Jaspar Wills’ books on travel and family life have turned him into a celebrity. He takes a trip to Morocco for work, but he’s also trying to escape the emotional fallout from his 13-year-old daughter Mikki’s abduction. Not long after landing, however, Jaspar is kidnapped by men whose language he doesn’t understand, and who are apparently holding him for ransom. Flashbacks reveal details of Mikki’s story from months before, back in Boston. An anonymous letter demanded $10 million from Jaspar and his wife, Jenn, but things didn’t go well, as the kidnapper correctly suspected the FBI’s involvement. Later, Jaspar’s captors put him into something called the “rectangle,” an isolated, small, outdoor prison where he can barely escape the blistering sun. Miraculously, he survives and makes it home, and Jenn’s journalist friend, Katie Edwards, hopes for a scoop. But when Jaspar beats her to the punch with an autobiography, Katie heads to Morocco herself in search of a piece of the story that no one else has—and what she unearths is shocking. Despite Jaspar’s imprisonment, Bidulka’s novel is more mysterious than frightening. The first third, for example, is an excerpt from the protagonist’s book, so readers will quickly surmise that he’ll make it out alive. The countless plot twists, however, are exhilarating, with gasp-inducing drama (including the lengths to which fame-hungry Katie will go) and flatly startling story turns. Bidulka wisely shifts the perspective from Jaspar to Katie, whose narrative deepens the mystery by making readers question Jaspar’s previous account. The back stories, particularly of Jaspar and Jenn’s meet-cute, add layers to the characters, and the deceptively simple prose has bursts of insight, as when a tearful Jenn falls into an embrace with Katie like “a marionette let loose from its strings.” The title, too, takes on multiple meanings, literal and metaphorical.
An intoxicating story that examines the elusive nature of truth.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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