A solid thriller that manages to infuse one boy’s coming-of-age with a whole lot of murder.
An obese teenage boy agrees to be the face of a lawsuit against the fast-food industry, not realizing that doing so has marked him as a target for a serial killer.
Jeremy Harjo Barton is fat, asthmatic, and unpopular. His life in Cleveland with his overworked single mom and his verbally abusive, agoraphobic grandfather revolves around his hiding in his room playing online games and eating his feelings away while longing to explore his Native American roots—the only thing left to him by his long-dead father. Life changes when Sue Fort, a nurse from a public weight-management clinic, convinces him to help with a lawsuit against the fast-food industry, arguing that as a result of excessive advertising, socioeconomic factors, and other things out of Jeremy’s control, the odds are stacked against him and others when it comes to obesity. Sue is a lightning rod for controversy thanks to her tough, take-no-prisoners attitude, and soon a great deal of unkind media attention is bestowed upon the lawsuit and Jeremy, now “the posterboy of fat.” The news coverage catches the attention of a serial killer named Darwin—a vicious fitness obsessive who hears a voice in his head telling him to murder fat people—who has decided to make Jeremy and Sue his next targets. Author Rubin (The Seneca Scourge, 2012), a public health advocate herself, manages to tell her story from three distinct perspectives without shortchanging any plotlines. Darwin occasionally comes across as a goofy, over-the-top villain, right down to his obsession with jigsaw puzzles, but Sue and Jeremy are both likable and lifelike protagonists. While the big reveal of Darwin’s true identity ends up being rather predictable, it doesn’t lessen the thrills of the story’s climax.
A solid thriller that manages to infuse one boy’s coming-of-age with a whole lot of murder.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: ScienceThrillers Media
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2015
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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