A superhuman capable of extreme feats of speed and strength must escape the NSA and his demons.
Rage; the very word conjures a directed fury—animate, precise, irate. To the low-level criminals and hoodlums of Chicago, Rage is a very real person, distributing justice on the nighttime streets with extreme vengeance. One of these acts captures the attention of widowed Chicago police officer Larry Parker, but Rage disappears before Parker can speak with him. Several weeks later, it’s Parker’s extreme misfortune to run into the seemingly bionic vigilante a second time, and Parker is drawn into a web of murders, cover-ups and national security secrets for which his police department training could never have prepared him. A secret even to most in the intelligence community, Rage is a product of a government experiment to reprogram the human genome and create a being who can do the impossible—leap buildings, throw vehicles, knock down walls with a single punch. Now, almost 30 years after this experiment began, the government wants their test subjects back, and an elite SWAT team has been deployed to capture Rage—but little does he know that there are two others like him. One is rogue, living as an assassin for hire, and the other is a loyal solider of the federal government; it’s this second soldier whom Rage, Parker and their cohorts must defeat to keep their freedom. The action traverses much of the Eastern United States, and, all too often, much of the storyline; the book features numerous taut combat and chase sequences, but ultimately lacks emotional depth. Several scenes of dreamlike intimacy are attempted between Rage and his beautiful female acquaintance, but the interactions and dialogue feel contrived and one-dimensional. Similarly, Rage often wrestles with his conscience, pondering whether his numerous killings are borne out of justice or bloodlust, but these moments never go beyond the surface and the philosophical issue is never satisfactorily resolved. Comparisons to Robert Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy (and many superheroes in American popular culture, for that matter) are certainly warranted. Readers will find that those books offer deeper looks into the world of an alienated, weaponized human being. A sharp thriller in many aspects, but lacks the robustness and depth of many classics of the genre.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1257802630
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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