A compelling yarn filled with drama, crime, and contemplations of identity.
In Emanuele’s thriller, the estranged grandson of a Mafia boss is lured back into a life of crime after his grandfather’s death.
The story opens in Milwaukee during the wake of Costantino “Cost” Caduto’s grandfather, Tiger, who had maintained a dominant presence in the construction business and in organized crime. His grandson has distanced himself from this milieu to raise his daughter, Maddy, after a fractured marriage. Tiger’s funeral brings Cost back into the center of Milwaukee’s criminal world, and Cost’s eulogy (“Tiger didn’t just live in this city. He helped shape it”) leads some to believe he might be ready to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, igniting old rivalries. Frank Vistoso, who thinks he’s Tiger’s rightful heir, bristles at Cost’s presence, and biker-gang leader Marek Novak sets his sights on the Caduto family. Cost tries to protect Maddy and Maria Celestina, a lost love from his past, with whom he’s reconnecting. As the narrative unfolds, often via family gatherings, Cost’s confrontations with Frank and his circle escalate. Cost realizes that despite his attempts to stay out of the “family business,” allies such as Donny Caduto and Lorenzo Leale are looking to him for leadership. Attorney James Flut, who was loyal to Tiger, is now assessing how the crime enterprise can survive. Cost struggles to choose between embracing his legacy or rewriting the story of his bloodline. Emanuele’s novel, set in a crime-ridden world, combines harsh elements with poetic language and explores how subtle interactions can expose feelings of loyalty and fear. Cost displays strong character development as he reckons with past wounds and his desperate wish to create a better life for his daughter. The story increases in danger and emotional impact via the well-developed characters of Frank, who displays fake confidence, and Maddy, who keeps her feelings hidden. The narrative’s deliberate pacing sets a rhythm that matches the heavy burden Cost bears in his situation.
A compelling yarn filled with drama, crime, and contemplations of identity.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798999275417
Page Count: 258
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2025
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
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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