An exhilarating page-turner that showcases this debut author’s talent for suspense.
In Rice’s thriller, a traumatized woman’s victimizers reemerge as a looming threat.
Erin Moore-Jackson was kidnapped and tortured 20 years ago—now, the man who did it is up for parole. At the time, Erin told the police that the man, Stanley Duggan, was not alone; he conducted the torture under the direction of a woman named Veronica. The police never found Veronica, and Duggan was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Erin can’t bring herself to testify at his parole hearing and see him again. Worse still, a journalist named Richard Fitzpatrick won’t leave her alone. He harasses her and her family, revealing information in the newspaper that he obtained from Duggan himself. Erin’s marriage is on the rocks as she struggles to trust her husband, Cody, in his fight against addiction. Most of all, she fears for the safety of her daughters and wants to protect them from the kinds of horrors she has survived. Duggan gets parole after Detective Warren Osborne testifies on his behalf—Osborne is desperate to catch Veronica after all these years and is willing to use Erin as bait to do it. But Duggan goes missing, and Erin receives mysterious cards in the mail. Someone is out there who wants to hurt her, and they may be closer than expected. Rice has written a masterful debut thriller with a fantastic hero in Erin, who leaps off the page with her bravery and relatability. Erin’s trauma is believable in the ways that it influences her life and her decisions in adulthood, especially regarding her children. The threat of Duggan and Veronica feels real, and the high stakes support the fast-paced plot (“Veronica was out there, and she would be coming again, for Erin or possibly one of the girls. It was simply a matter of time”). For those who enjoy thrillers about strong women who face impossible odds, this is a terrific read.
An exhilarating page-turner that showcases this debut author’s talent for suspense.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781509255399
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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