A man and his dog slay pederasts from New York City to Florida in this surging thriller from ex–law enforcement investigator Barton.
When it comes to sexual predators preying on children, they rarely elicit a sense of mercy, so when Barton’s protagonist—Jack Steele, a former policeman, now a wealthy vigilante—snuffs out pederasts actively pursuing their wretched desires, it’s hard to quibble with Steele’s extrajudicial resolution. That’s the strength of Barton’s story: The reader feels an immediate affinity for Steele, despite his uncivilized behavior. His acts of retribution happen in choppy, muscular bursts that read like real-life events. The violence can be boiling—“Blood poured from the bullet-riddled face”—but there’s also a surprising quietude, a sense of security from knowing someone’s out there tending to things. Steele makes no bones about his plans for murder: “I’ll find this bastard….And then I’ll kill him.” And so he does, usually under atmospheric circumstances, thankfully without fist pumping. He’s a gentleman, and the woman he meets going about his wet work, Sarah, is a gentlewoman. A brilliant authorial decision was threading the dog, Sadie, into the tale; she’s attuned to the music of the spheres unlike any human crusader. She’s also a glutton and a force for good, even if she’ll tear you apart if you cross her. Barton draws Steele and Sarah’s relationship with an easy camaraderie. The final pages, though melodramatic, overflow with bittersweetness and bite.
A well-crafted novel that cuttingly tackles vigilantism and vengeance.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456743093
Page Count: 220
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | THRILLER | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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A poignant story of courage, misogyny, and misused power.
In 1947, Elinor White lives in a village in Kent in a grace-and-favor house, rewarded for her service to the crown, and keeps her own counsel. A farmworkers's cottage nearby is home to the Mackie family: Jim, Rose, and little Susie, who befriends the wary Elinor. Jim comes from a family of notorious London gangsters, and when they want him to return to the fold, they'll resort to violence to convince him. In interspersed chapters we learn about the background that Elinor keeps to herself: She was a spy during both world wars. Back in 1914, in Belgium, 10-year-old Elinor, youngest daughter of a Belgian father and English mother, tries to catch a boat to England along with her mother and sister, Cecily, before the German advance, but they're too late and return to their home, now under occupation. Some time later, a mysterious woman named Isabelle approaches their mother and recruits the two girls to spy on the Germans. It's easy for schoolgirls to appear innocuous as they count the number of trains that pass by their village. The sisters are trained in sabotage and self-defense. Elinor is a natural, but Cecily is not, and when Elinor kills two German soldiers trying to rape her sister, Isabelle smuggles them out to England—where Elinor faces another war, decades later, by working with the Special Operations Executive and returning to Belgium. Now she hopes her contacts from those days will save Jim from the clutches of the Mackie family. Her wartime experiences come back to haunt her, leaving her unable to trust anyone. In the end, it’s the gangsters who tell her the truth that will shatter her world and give her hope for the future.
A tense history-based thriller filled with anguish and suspense.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780062867988
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | THRILLER | HISTORICAL THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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