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AFTERBURN

The handy cliché alleging that a thriller is so good it transcends its genre has rarely been truer than in the case of this breathtakingly suspenseful meditation on the interwoven ambiguities of life and death. Two terrific set-pieces open the story. The first, a Prologue set in Vietnam in 1972, recounts in nerve-shattering detail the capture, imprisonment, and eventual rescue of fighter pilot Charlie Ravich. Then, we observe Charlie 27 years later in Hong Kong, now the wealthy CEO of a telecommunications company, as he turns his “insider’s” knowledge of the death of an influential Chinese businessman into a multimillion-dollar profit. At that point, the focus shifts to Christina Welles, a college-educated beauty just released from prison, where she served four years for her part in a truck-theft ring masterminded by mafioso Tony Verducci. Shifting with masterly ease among his protagonists, Harrison (Manhattan Nocturne, 1996, etc.) explores Charlie’s desperation to perpetuate his name (his only son dead, his only daughter infertile) as he seeks a surrogate mother; Christina’s wary flight from the avenging Verducci (who, she intuits, suspects she’s double-crossed him, and has arranged her release); and the search for Christina that’s being undertaken by her former lover (and criminal partner), bodybuilder Rick Bocca—who aims to get to her before Tony does. In crisp scenes rendered in trim declarative sentences, Harrison traces his characters— separate paths while simultaneously analyzing their individual obsessions and guilts: Charlie’s belief that the obliteration of his name may be punishment for the death he rained on the Vietnamese; Rick’s compromised Catholic sense of sin; and Christina’s weary surrender to her own “hardness” and amorality. The story’s climax (which includes several graphic torture scenes) and devastating finale brilliantly underscore Harrison’s commanding central irony: that in the midst of life we are in the presence of death. A practically perfect literary thriller with a bitter lingering “afterburn” indeed. (First printing of 100,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-374-10205-8

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999

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DEVOLUTION

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. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

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