A fast-paced detective novel, enhanced by exceptional characters and a striking ending.
A California private eye’s investigation of a questionable suicide leads to a clandestine club and a series of murders in Cassiday’s (Wipeout, 2017, etc.) mystery-thriller.
When horror novelist Bart Dillinger realizes that his girlfriend, Jackie Merced, has been missing without a trace since the previous night, he’s reluctant to call the cops. He fears that they’ll think he’s overreacting; what if she’s just stranded somewhere with a dead cellphone battery? So he hires PI Ethan Carr, who verifies that Jackie is, sadly, dead. Cops recently found her shot to death in a car submerged in the ocean; amazingly, they write it off as suicide, theorizing that she shot herself while simultaneously driving off a cliff. Neither Carr nor Dillinger buy that, so the PI stays on the case. It turns out Jackie belonged to the Russian Club, a secret organization whose membership requires another member’s recommendation. Carr attempts to infiltrate it while also trying to tie Jackie’s death with two other victims, who also died from gunshots to the head. Then he comes home to find human eyeballs nailed to his front door. As if that weren’t enough, someone later tosses a stick of dynamite into his car—while he’s inside it. Brief chapters and short, punchy dialogue give Cassiday’s story a consistently brisk tempo. This is particularly effective during Carr’s rapid-fire interrogations of various people, including his own client. Dillinger, too, is a sensational character; his need to learn what happened to Jackie seemingly, and intriguingly, competes with his yearning for a successful writing career. The possibility that Dillinger might be headed toward a mental collapse later becomes a potent subplot—one that overshadows the main investigation, which becomes stagnant. However, a late introduction of a villainous character ramps up the menace, and the wrap-up of Carr’s case, and the grim coda, are memorable.
A fast-paced detective novel, enhanced by exceptional characters and a striking ending.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5483-0766-0
Page Count: 561
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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