Vicarious pleasure for anyone wanting to see the scum of the world get its due.
Series heroes join forces with other righteous killers to punish sexual predators in Eisler’s latest thriller (Zero Sum, 2017, etc.).
A secret internet site called Child’s Play features videos of horrible sexual abuse and torture of children. Feds suspect members of the Secret Service may be participants, but their investigation is inexplicably shut down. Meanwhile, John Rain specializes in “services” that appear to have natural causes, but he turns down a hit job on Livia Lone because he doesn’t kill women or children. Livia is a sex-crimes investigator for the Seattle PD and has a ferocious hatred for the world’s “freaks and predators.” Born in Thailand and originally named Labee, she was sold by her parents to the Lone family in Idaho, where she suffered unspeakable abuse. Now she works on both sides of the law, putting creeps in prison when she can—but “the only thing better than a rapist in prison was a rapist in the ground.” She has secretly killed at least a dozen of them, and she joins forces with professional killers such as Rain to bring down Child’s Play once and for all. The most interesting of the bunch are Dox, who helped Livia kill a child molester in Thailand and would “kill a whole lot of people” to protect her, and Delilah, the blonde Mossad agent who uses her body as well as her gun. One of their threats is Oliver Graham Enterprises (OGE—“you couldn’t spell rogue without O-G-E”), which wants to fight America’s wars and incidentally kill John Rain. The stakes may go even higher than “six active pederasts in the Secret Service” as the story reaches its bloody crescendo. It is rich in backstory, though it can stand alone. Still, Livia Lone (2016) is the ideal introduction to a sympathetic, damaged, and vengeful character.
Vicarious pleasure for anyone wanting to see the scum of the world get its due.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5039-0426-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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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