An intellectually stimulating novel full of intrigue.
A debut political thriller revolves around a shady health insurance company that richly profits from its customers’ deaths.
Merritt Royce is only 34 years old but she’s already the assistant deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an ambitious careerist following in the footsteps of her father. She learns from an insurance industry analyst that despite an inhospitable economic climate, Delaware General, a major insurance provider, is mystifyingly profitable. Merritt decides to investigate the sources of the company’s peculiar success, hoping to discover something useful to communicate to other industry players. But her actuary figures reveal that the real cause of Delaware General’s good fortune is that the mortality rate among its policy holders who have life-threatening diseases is seven times higher than those of its competitors. In fact, the company offers its clients an unusual and criminal deal—a paperless arrangement that allows them to choose the timing and circumstances of their own deaths, dignified exits from prolonged suffering and humiliating diminishment. Merritt wants to dig deeper, but her boss, Secretary Donald Vickers, orders her to cool her heels and sweetens the pot by offering her a promotion. He’s an old friend of Delbert Lee Burroughs, the billionaire chairman of Delaware General, who is a powerful figure in Washington, D.C. To complicate matters, Merritt’s new boyfriend, Grant Launder, is a lawyer for Baker and Jensen, the firm that has handled Delaware General’s business for 20 years. Grant’s bosses promise him a leg up at the firm in exchange for spying on Merritt. Russell spent years working for the federal government, and his experience shows—his knowledge of the inner machinations of bureaucratic life is impressive. The plot can get complicated—the story doesn’t want for agencies represented by initialisms—but the writing itself is helpfully lucid. In addition, the author raises provocative questions about the morality of euthanasia as well as the complex nexus formed by the health care industry and its political regulators. Merritt is a memorable heroine: tough but capable of vulnerability; realistically pragmatic yet also guided by ethical principles. Russell thoughtfully fuses political drama with moral philosophy.
An intellectually stimulating novel full of intrigue.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5123-7888-7
Page Count: 366
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2018
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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