A so-so outing, although Coulter’s fans will likely enjoy the new characters.
Coulter (KnockOut, 2009, etc.) delivers the 14th novel in her long-running series of thrillers featuring FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock, this time introducing two new major characters.
Helmut Blauvelt, a German national, is found murdered on federal land in Connecticut, his fingertips cut off and his face disfigured. It turns out he’s a troubleshooter for the nearby pharmaceutical company Schiffer Hartwin. On the night of the murder, private investigator Erin Pulaski was stealing documents from the Schiffer Hartwin CEO’s own computer, to help prove that the company had been causing an artificial scarcity of an in-demand cancer medication. She didn’t kill Blauvelt, but wants to know who did. And, coincidentally, Pulaski is also the ballet teacher for the daughter of hardworking, widowed FBI agent Bowie Richards, who’s investigating the Blauvelt murder with Coulter regulars Savich and Sherlock. The primary mystery’s drug-company angle seems to be an attempt to tackle a health-care issue for topicality’s sake—giving characters multiple opportunities to talk about pharma wrongdoing. Overall, however, despite attempts to liven things up—including a scene involving an exploding SUV—it’s a fairly standard procedural, with predictable and sometimes rather lifeless dialogue. A second, supernaturally tinged mystery involves a U.S. senator apparently being visited by the ghost of his dead wife, while at the same time seeming to be targeted by assassins—eventually leading to the vice president of the United States ending up in the hospital. Unfortunately, this mystery is shoehorned awkwardly into the action, and at times feels as if it had drifted in from an altogether different novel. That said, the two new characters, Pulaski and Richards, are fine additions, and the sections that focus on them feel the most authentic and are the most entertaining.
A so-so outing, although Coulter’s fans will likely enjoy the new characters.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-15653-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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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