Stroud moves his ongoing and powerful police-paean (Sniper's Moon, 1990; Close Pursuit, 1987) from Manhattan to Montana—and rustles up a bronco of a thriller that throws him near the end of the ride. The myth of the West inspires Stroud to some bravura writing here—his pages practically exhale prairie dust—and some terrific characters, starting with Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Beau McAllister, 45, responding to a robbery report at Joe Bell's truck stop. There, McAllister finds an Indian boy shot dead by Bell, who's now blasting away at four other Indians shooting back with bow and arrow from the shadows of Bell's huge oil tank—reason enough (to prevent a deadly explosion) for McAllister to plug Bell in the buttocks. The Indians escape and Bell threatens to sue, but that's the least of McAllister's troubles, with sleek A.D.A. Vanessa Ballard thinking of bringing him up on charges, and McAllister's shrewish ex-wife and her lawyer-lover trying to drive a dirty wedge between the cop and his young daughter. Even those problems, though, don't match the one posed by Hollywood stuntman Gabriel Picketwire, Lakota Sioux and ex-Army assassin, returning to Montana to avenge the death of the boy shot by Bell. By the time Picketwire catches up to Bell, McAllister has fought the escapees in terrifying nighttime hand-to-hand combat and killed one—prelude to Picketwire's confrontation with Bell, which sees the Indian shot and buried alive, dug up by a dog, and then stalking Bell to skin him alive. All this tremendously virile action derails, however, when McAllister ferrets out the reason for the Indians' attack on Bell—a medical conspiracy so far-fetched it might give even Robin Cook pause, and headed by a most unconvincing villain. Lop off the mixed-up final 50 pages or so, though, and you have a cops-vs.-Indians novel to rival John Sandford's Shadow Prey.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-553-08935-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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