Good-natured rather than comical, with the Jamaica background the biggest plus. Maybe Morris should omit the obligatory plot...
More Caribbean intrigue for ex-football player Zachary Taylor Chasteen, who inherits a bodyguard gig from a friend who thought they’d be serving together.
Even when he’s relaxing with his publisher girlfriend Barbara Pickering at a Gators game, Zack Chasteen just can’t stay out of trouble. First his old roommate Monk DeVane wants him to talk to Libido Resorts founder Darcy Whitehall about a job protecting Libido’s interests in Jamaica; then Whitehall’s VIP stadium seat turns out to be wired with explosives; then, when everybody escapes the mini-bomb and Zack agrees to fly out to the islands, Monk is blown to smithereens before Zack can even unpack his bags. At first the bombs look like the work of Nanny’s People United, the rabble-rousing political party whose candidate is opposing Whitehall’s son Alan in a Parliamentary election. But Zack wonders if the power behind them couldn’t be Freddie Arzghanian, the money-laundering partner Whitehall’s been struggling to shake off. As in Zack’s debut (Bahamarama, 2004), protocol requires that Zack be separated from Barbara, off in Berlin being tempted by a voracious media mogul, so that he can undergo some temptations of his own. Don’t worry: Zack is no more likely to cheat on his ladylove than to figure out the bomber’s identity before you do.
Good-natured rather than comical, with the Jamaica background the biggest plus. Maybe Morris should omit the obligatory plot and just write travelogues.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32891-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Striking a far less hysterical tone than in The Shining, King has written his most sweeping horror novel in The Stand, though it may lack the spinal jingles of Salem's Lot. In part this is because The Stand, with its flow of hundreds of brand-name products, is a kind of inventory of American culture. "Superflu" has hit the U.S. and the world, rapidly wiping out the whole of civilization—excepting the one-half of one percent who are immune. Superflu is a virus with a shifting antigen base; that is, it can kill every type of antibody the human organism can muster against it. Immunity seems to be a gift from God—or the Devil. The Devil himself has become embodied in a clairvoyant called Randall Flagg, a phantom-y fellow who walks highways and is known variously as "the dark man" or "the Walking Dude" and who has set up a new empire in Las Vegas where he rules by fear, his hair giving off sparks while he floats in the lotus position. He is very angry because the immune folks in the Free Zone up at Boulder have sent a small force against him; they get their message from Him (God) through a dying black crone named Abigail, who is also clairvoyant. There are only four in this Boulder crew, led by Stu Redman from East Texas, who is in love with pregnant Fran back in the Free Zone. Good and Evil come to an atomic clash at the climax, the Book of Revelations working itself out rather too explicitly. But more importantly, there are memorable scenes of the superflu spreading hideously, Fifth Avenue choked with dead cars, Flagg's minions putting up fresh lightbulbs all over Vegas. . . . Some King fans will be put off by the pretensions here; most will embrace them along with the earthier chilis.
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1978
ISBN: 0307743683
Page Count: 1450
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1978
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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