Even the most ardent readers are more likely to turn the last page exhausted rather than eager for the sequels.
McKinney opens his futuristic Water City Trilogy with a slice of post-apocalyptic noir even darker and more stylized than Blade Runner.
Called to Akira Kimura’s penthouse in the undersea mansion of Volcano Vista to provide personal security for his old friend, the nameless narrator finds his prospective client flooded with nitro and dismembered inside her hibernation chamber. It’s a grim fate for the most famous person in the world, the scientist who back in 2102 spotted the asteroid Sessho-seki on a collision course with Earth and overcame the relentless objections of people like NASA scientist Dr. Karlin Brum to launch the Ascalon Project, whose cosmic ray split The Killing Rock into halves that darted off in different, non-Earthbound directions. But it’s far from the most bizarre thing that will happen to the narrator, an 80-year-old detective who served as Akira’s bodyguard while she worked on the project. Over the next week he’ll quit his job during an interrogation by his boss, pull a thermal blade on Akira’s wealthy grad school friend Jerry Caldwell, get arrested for murder when Jerry’s killed soon afterward, submit to another interrogation by Sabrina, the fourth wife he mentored when she was a rookie cop, and enlist his friend Akeem Buhari to accompany him on a midnight visit to Akira’s mausoleum to fulfill her last request: that he find the daughter she abandoned years ago and apologize to her. The landscape is so densely imagined in both technological and political terms (think class warfare and cellphones on steroids) that it’s no easy task to concentrate on the self-tormenting hero, who reflects that “violence is when I’m most in tune with my flow,” or his investigation.
Even the most ardent readers are more likely to turn the last page exhausted rather than eager for the sequels.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-641-29240-5
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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