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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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