An exceptional whodunit that simmers with mystery and suspense.
A university professor with secrets gets entangled in a murder mystery in Scott’s (Margel’s Madness, 2015, etc.) latest series thriller.
Middle-aged Gil Hodges, director of the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources, finds a severed finger in his office. As a police detective starts an inquiry, Liz Horvath, a retired professor of psychology and counseling, shows up to talk to Gil about Tiffany Burgess, one of her patients. Gil met Tiffany three years ago, when she was 15 and living on Matinicus Island, off the Maine coast. He hasn’t seen her since, but he knows that the eccentric teen has been periodically breaking into his campus office, taking insignificant items, and later returning them. He suspects Tiffany of giving him the severed finger and also of surreptitiously entering his condo and stealing a small safe. But Gil doesn’t impart this information to authorities—even after Tiffany subsequently appears in his classroom. It turns out that the two share a potentially dangerous secret regarding some deaths back on Matinicus. Gil surmises that Tiffany’s presence in Maine is a vague threat, because the secret involved the professor lying to quite a few people. But then she asks for his assistance in getting back her daughter, whose custody she lost. On the pretense of a family emergency, Gil takes leave from the university and heads to Matinicus to help, which may result in him finally telling the truth about what happened three years ago. But it isn’t long before a likely staged suicide puts everyone on the island under suspicion—with outsider Gil at the top of the list. Readers need not be familiar with Scott’s preceding novels, which also star Gil, to enjoy this third installment. Although the story heavily references an earlier book, the prologue offers some clarification for new readers. The professor isn’t a particularly likable protagonist; he’s known for having inappropriate relationships with his female college students, for example. But he also seems invested in his search for redemption—persistently struggling to improve on what he calls “the old me.” Gil also becomes more sympathetic as the story progresses; for example, he keeps his secret not only due to self-preservation, but also because he believes that the truth will endanger many others. In addition to various mysteries (whose finger is that, anyway?), there are some genuinely chilling moments, as when Gil, at one point, sees signs that a stranger has been inside his home. The conclusion does deftly reveal the killer’s identity, although the person’s motives are a bit convoluted. Still, Scott offers sharply defined characters as well as effervescent detail: “The harbor opens up as we round the breakwater—a semi-circle of small, weathered homes revealing themselves alongside workshops dotted with propane tanks and outhouses; finger piers crammed with wire traps, gaggles of lobster pots, coiled line, and assorted other gear.” Supporting characters also stand out—most notably Al Freeman, who, along with his late wife, raised the abandoned Tiffany as his own.
An exceptional whodunit that simmers with mystery and suspense.Pub Date: March 20, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 197
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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