First-rate suspense.
Turrill (An Apology for Autumn, 2004) delivers a terrific literary thriller that merges meditations on mortality with a fast-paced shoot-’em-up.
At 30, Tinker Balune doesn’t have much to live for: His mother is long dead, his preacher father has committed suicide and, worst of all, his lovely young wife Wendy was beaten to death with a baseball bat—and the murderer is his older brother, Satchel. Out at the family cabin on Loon Lake, Tin decides in a drunken stupor to end it all. Tin passes out before he can drown himself, and the next morning, he meets Moira, his lake neighbor Sweeney’s 18-year-old daughter. Remembering her as a kid, Tin decides life might be worth a try after a few conversations with the gorgeous, brilliant, nubile young woman. They spend an amiable afternoon of mutual attraction and soul-bearing. (Tin’s most pertinent confession: Satchel’s motive for killing Wendy was old-fashioned jealousy—the two were once happily engaged until Tin stole her away and confessed his love on the day of Satchel’s debut as a major-league pitcher, ruining Satchel’s future in every sphere.) When Tin and Moira arrive back at the cabins, they find Sweeney missing and a cryptic kidnapper’s note. They are sure that Satchel, who has evaded the law for years, now wants Tin and is using old Sweeney as the bait. After some clever decoding, the two head to Chicago (where their romance heats up and talk of fated love ensues) to await further instructions from Satchel. Imagine their surprise when Satchel and his girlfriend Moon show up at their hotel for what Satchel was told would be a reconciliation (he swears to Tin he didn’t kill Wendy). Who has Sweeney? Who killed Wendy? And who is that woman who keeps staring at them from the room across the street? An intricate tale of revenge, incest and murder sweeps Tin, Moira, Satchel and Moon around Chicago as all the clues fall into place, and just as the gun is placed to their heads.
First-rate suspense.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59264-166-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Toby Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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