Nazis, noir, and a soupçon of boudoir combine to make this a memorable thriller.
In Trolson’s (A Passing Curse, 2012) new crime novel, a damaged, dangerous, and relentlessly drinking West Coast cop needs to find answers after heads literally start to roll—with his name carved into them.
It’s the 1990s, and if Southern California–based homicide detective Jack Wainwright isn’t drinking, he isn’t awake. Excessive imbibing, however, doesn’t hamper him from easily bedding women roughly half his age. He lives in his inherited “Moorish castle knock-off” that he shares with his septuagenarian uncle, Max, who’s said to have had ties to Adolf Hitler. In the ’60s, Jack served in Vietnam as part of Team Viking, a group of soldier-assassins that tested stamina-enhancing drugs under the supervision of psychiatrist Lucius King. Now, two dismembered former Team Viking members have just been unearthed on Jack’s neighbor’s property, with the name “Charon” carved into their foreheads—Jack’s code name when he was in Vietnam. Also found was a rare, gold swastika pin, which Jack believes belongs to Max. Jack seeks King’s help in solving the recent murders, but he keeps suspicions regarding his uncle a secret. After more members of Team Viking are found murdered, Jack, Max, and King head to Zurich to retrieve King’s hidden memoirs, written long ago, which the psychiatrist says should reveal who wanted the former soldiers dead. Hard-edged dialogue is typical for this book. Before the trio leave for Switzerland, for instance, Jack’s housekeeper warns him, “The doctor is trouble and that old man your uncle is not stable. You watch them.” Later, Jack also hooks up with a girl in a jazz club; she thinks that Jack’s home state of California is near Florida: “No. It’s on the other side of the country,” he says, continuing, “Florida’s like a redneck California.” Trolson also offers vivid descriptions: “[He] finished the heel from a half-pint of Popov vodka, drinking it hot and straight and whistling when he was done.” The plot is absorbing and complicated—for example, when it starts, King is a confessed, institutionalized serial killer—and this results in quickly turned pages.
Nazis, noir, and a soupçon of boudoir combine to make this a memorable thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 315
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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