by Clive Cussler ; Russell Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 2014
An inane but inoffensive potboiler, to be quickly and pleasantly consumed and forgotten.
The Fargos are back, again going far.
Cussler’s (Zero Hour, 2013, etc.) blissfully wedded, globe-trotting treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo return for another round of stupendous discoveries, narrow escapes and relentless cheesy banter in this serviceable but unmemorable adventure. This time around, the pair is on the trail of the titular Eye of Heaven, a grapefruit-sized gem believed to adorn the tomb of fabled Toltec leader Quetzalcoatl. Assisting them are dissolute genius academic Lazlo and an improbably attractive Mexican brother/sister archaeologist duo. Fargo nemesis Janus Benedict, an urbane, supercilious British supercriminal in the Bond-villain mode, also covets the Eye, and he, his impulsive, sadistic brother, and a fearsome Mexican crime cartel complicate matters greatly for the intrepid duo. It’s all breezy, weightless fun for the undemanding reader; the prose can charitably be described as workmanlike, characterizations are paper-thin, and perilous plot twists and their predictable resolutions arrive right on schedule. The historical context of the quest, which concerns a collision of Viking and Mesoamerican cultures, provides some interest, though it's inelegantly relayed in whopping great chunks of expository dialogue. The shameless aspirational wish fulfillment represented by the Fargos may also exert a certain appeal for those killing time under beach umbrellas or in airport terminals: The two are fabulously wealthy, accomplished, brilliant, attractive, resourceful, courageous and unfailingly virtuous, with a crackling mutual attraction that sustains them through lovingly described expensive restaurant meals and trips on their private jet to exotic locales. Must be rough.
An inane but inoffensive potboiler, to be quickly and pleasantly consumed and forgotten.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16730-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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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.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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