Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.
A compelling, thoughtful thriller that follows a couple’s attempt to escape danger.
In a world where we are forever watching and being watched, can anyone truly keep a secret? This question churns at the center of Miles’ (The Shootings At Summerhill High School, 2012) novel, a tale of deception and intrigue that also serves as a troubling commentary on the loss of privacy. Blissfully celebrating their first anniversary, newlyweds Derrick and Rhiannon Brewster escape to a remote cabin in the mountains. While eating at a restaurant just before their retreat, they witness a horrifying murder. Sen. Wilkins, suspected of being behind a brutal political campaign designed to shut out the democratic candidate, is accosted by an eager young journalist. The senator pulls a gun on the young man and kills him in front of a restaurant full of witnesses; it’s caught on video for good measure. Predictably, the video goes viral, both on news channels and, in an uncut version, all over the Internet. Derrick, a journalist, now finds his job hanging in the balance for having fled the scene of the crime rather than reporting it. Rhiannon’s unwitting appearance in the video astounds one viewer. Rhiannon had foiled Marc David Anthony’s attempt at creating an international data mining operation; she then took on a new identity and went into hiding, unbeknownst to her new husband. Anthony tracks Rhiannon and sends professional hitmen to her house, making it clear he’s thirsty for revenge. The couple soon lands in intense danger, needing to find strength from within themselves and from each other. Suspenseful and captivating, Derrick and Rhiannon’s story brims with love and intrigue as they travel the country in search of safety. Miles tells a fast-paced story that explores what can happen to a couple when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
Transcends the common thriller while examining contemporary disregard for privacy.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480272569
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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