Distrust and deceit throw soldiers and civilians into a tailspin in this gripping tale.
Chaos reigns when the Army seizes a rustic little town to stop a virus from spreading in this debut thriller.
Martin Fallon has eluded the Army soldiers hounding him for an entire month. He’d been part of a top-secret project, and now he’s infected with a virus. At least, that’s what Col. Preston Aldridge tells townsfolk in Harper’s Glen, close to where a blizzard spins Fallon’s car off the road. The desperate Fallon, after recovering at the local hospital, seeks refuge at nurse Shelly Christianson’s home. Though he initially takes Shelly hostage, Fallon may not be as crazy as he seems. He claims the Army is after him because he knows about the biological agent it’s been inhumanely testing—and all he wants to do is flee. Meanwhile, Aldridge sets up his command post at the hospital as he attempts to quarantine Harper’s Glen’s citizens. Soldiers also scour the area for Fallon, but residents object to their presence, convinced the Army has “kidnapped” the medical staff of the entire town. When the townsfolk’s resistance turns aggressive, the armed soldiers use deadly force. This only further enrages the civilians, who retaliate with guns and much worse. McBee’s novel generates intensity through a bevy of dubious characters. For example, readers don’t know who’s lying—Aldridge or Fallon—and each convincingly explains how the other is more dangerous. The cast comprises numerous players often reacting to someone’s hostility, including in action-laden scenes of the Army versus the residents. As such, the characters are generally underdeveloped, though Shelly is unquestionably sympathetic. She escaped from an abusive husband, and she won’t let Fallon make her a victim again. Despite several explosively violent turns in the story, the author’s grandest descriptions portray the cold, snowy surroundings: “Away from the plowed roads, the top-heavy military trucks slipped and fishtailed, fighting for traction on the slick muddy surface. Slowly, they plodded along.”
Distrust and deceit throw soldiers and civilians into a tailspin in this gripping tale.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63-752882-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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