This striking, fast-paced tale traverses the globe with worthy heroes and tenacious baddies.
An Israeli sniper and an American cop dodge assassins and try to thwart a terrorist attack in this debut thriller.
Israel Defense Force Staff Sgt. Haddy Abrams’ impressive long-distance shot takes out an al- Qaida leader. This only enrages the diabolical man known as X, who’s now lost a moneymaking business partner. So X, hiding in the mountains in Russia, sends an enforcer to kill Haddy. Their histories further complicate matters; Haddy is the daughter of X’s dead “nemesis,” an investigative reporter who managed to identify the elusive villain. This makes Haddy’s family a target as well. While taking on assassins in various countries, she eventually catches on to X’s devious plot—a multimissile launch against Jerusalem. Meanwhile, New York City Police Department Det. and former Army Ranger Liam “Wolf” James, on special assignment in Odessa, lands right in the midst of all that’s unfolding. He has long pined for a young woman with the Star of David around her neck whom he once passed on Mount Rainier (“This woman, whom he dubbed his ‘Snow Queen,’ had a long braid of black hair”). Perhaps she’s Haddy, the combat-trained soldier he can help shut down X’s schemes for good. Farmer jampacks this gripping story with rich character and plot details. Haddy, for example, tormented by her father’s murder (the day she was born), regularly contemplates suicide. The huge cast includes people whom X forces into securing the missiles, like some of Haddy’s relatives and an escort fighting to save her abducted 5-year-old daughter. They’re all entangled in a kinetic narrative that bounces around such places as Ukraine and the United States, whether on land or sea. Action scenes come in bursts—this brevity somewhat tones down violent moments (for example, broken bones and a 10-inch blade). In addition, Farmer effectively teases Haddy and Wolf’s inevitable meeting, understating the fateful encounter with some welcome humor.
This striking, fast-paced tale traverses the globe with worthy heroes and tenacious baddies.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985434330
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Epigraph
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2022
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
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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