Readers won’t linger over the last page like it’s a good scotch, but Franze’s freshman effort is a painless way to pass the...
Franze’s first fiction foray centers around a potential Supreme Court nominee whose secret involvement in a murder as a young teenager returns to haunt him.
Thirty years ago, Sean Serrat was the commanding general’s son at the U.S. military base in Misawa, Japan, when he and two other boys were involved in the killing of a Japanese storekeeper. After Kenny knifed the man, he swore friends Sean and Juan to secrecy. Years later, Sean’s a noted attorney with a family of his own, and his name is being bandied about as a possible Supreme Court nominee. While Sean’s professional life is heating up, so is his personal one, but in a worrisome way. Sean and his wife, Emily, have been unable to get in contact with their daughter, Abby, a law student. Sean missed the call Abby made to him on the day she disappeared, and his efforts to find her have been futile. Finally, Sean enlists an FBI agent neighbor in the search, and together, they discover Abby’s body. After her boyfriend is arrested and charged with her murder, Sean confronts a drug dealer who may or may not have something to do with Abby’s death. When things go even more sideways, Sean finds himself and his young son, Ryan, constructing alibis to cover their involvement in another crime. Soon, it’s clear to Sean that the events of that long-ago night in Japan may be coming back to haunt him. Franze’s story isn’t rocket science: there’s no deliciously complicated, twisty-turny plot, but that’s OK. Despite his penchant for clichés—a cop vomiting at the sight of a dead body; the careful political correctness adopted by Abby and Sean; and characters who always seem to make the dumbest possible choices—this is a nifty little read.
Readers won’t linger over the last page like it’s a good scotch, but Franze’s freshman effort is a painless way to pass the time.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07165-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
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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