A sharply defined, engrossing cast elevates this crime caper.
In this debut thriller, authorities face off against feuding drug dealers itching for war in 1980s Chicago.
A professional killer is targeting drug-dealing thugs mostly using the same knife-related M.O. After eight murders, police detectives William “Bernie” Bernardelli and Marcelle DeSantis have no evidence and no leads. Then things get more complicated, as they receive word that a Southeast Asian heroin group is setting up shop in Chicago. The feds send Internal Revenue Service Special Agent John Shepard, a socially inept accountant with a generalized anxiety disorder, to meet with the detectives. Shepard asks Bernie and Marcelle to protect the heroin group’s American security head, Robert Thornton, making sure no one kills him before he can testify: “We need twenty-four-hour surveillance on Thornton. Two-man teams who follow Thornton whenever he leaves his mansion.” Now, Bernie and Marcelle want to know all about Thornton, convinced that the peculiar Shepard has withheld vital information about the criminal. Meanwhile, quite a few people want a set of covert missions conducted in Vietnam years ago involving Thornton to stay deeply buried. As the two detectives scramble to prevent a drug war, they confront rival gangs, a frighteningly meticulous hit man, and someone who’s craving lethal vengeance. Well-developed characters drive Rabin’s taut thriller, as chummy partners Bernie and Marcelle spend much of their time digging into Shepard’s and Thornton’s shady pasts. Shepard, meanwhile, seemingly takes steps to overcome his anxiety, such as learning the “secret language” infused in other people’s social interactions. There’s nevertheless little in the way of a mystery or an investigation, as the stellar opening scene set during the Vietnam War fuels the main plot. Still, tensions slowly escalate throughout the novel. For example, one recurring narrative perspective reveals a man mowing his lawn and making lunch followed by a post office trip for cash pickups—his payments for assassinations. Although action is fleeting, the story builds to a lengthy, sensational final act, brimming with well-earned suspense.
A sharply defined, engrossing cast elevates this crime caper.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68513-059-6
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2022
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
