by Claudia Turner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 2014
An often entertaining read about political corruption, romance and hope for a better future.
In Turner’s debut novel, career CIA agent Kat Hastings uncovers the shocking truth behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination and confronts her own troubled relationship with her father.
Kat Hastings is pushing 60 and yet still finds herself doing the bidding of her boss, Ben, and her emotionally unavailable spy father, the cryptically named H2. The former wants her to explore a CIA vault that supposedly contains secrets relating to JFK’s assassination, while the latter wants her to refrain from exploring her passions. She obeys both men, until she realizes just how potentially revolutionary each discovery could be. She uncovers JFK’s brain in a canister, and finds a renewed passion for former lover and investigative reporter Robbie. Her allegiance to her rigid code of conduct is tested to the limit; she even flat-out lies to her supervisor about sharing information with Robbie, ruining an otherwise unblemished service record. Much like the Tom Clancy canon, the novel purposefully employs a patriotic, dedicated protagonist to deepen the shock of her discovery of corruption. Turner’s heavily researched conjectures on the assassination and its subsequent effect on the national psyche are thought-provoking, if not necessarily original. More surprising is how vividly Turner realizes her characters, at least for most of the book. Robbie, for example, is quickly fleshed out in only a few sentences: “ ‘My wife died.’ He traced his scar. His pain seemed fresh. For the first time, I noticed the years etched into his face.” The novel’s final third, however, devolves into a jumble of false confidences and hidden identities, along with torture and double crosses. However, the author demonstrates a solid grasp of community dynamics and the often disappointing complexity of adult relationships. Her prose reveals a softness with a noirish, Chandler-esque edge: “He could be as cold, hard, and secretive as the file cabinets that flanked him.” Readers seeking a somber yet probing inquiry into the limits of romance, duty and renewal late in life will relish Kat’s attempts to balance the needs of her heart with the realities of national security.
An often entertaining read about political corruption, romance and hope for a better future.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492346302
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
143
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Max Brooks
BOOK REVIEW
by Max Brooks
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Joanna Wallace ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.