A searing, curious look at ritualistic homicides boosts this striking thriller.
In this mystery, a researcher and a police deputy have inexplicable ties to a serial killer in New York state.
Sage Stevenson had been a cutter when she was a teen. But she hasn’t harmed herself in over a decade and is now busy with her postdoctoral research in paleography. That’s why she can’t explain the scars on her skin—brand new ones she’s never seen before. In Sage’s city, Savanaugh, New York, Deputy Marquis Marchant is just one of the cops at a brutal murder scene. The killer had severed the victim’s limbs, sewn them together, and carved unknown symbols into the skin (“Some of the markings—especially in the middle of the man’s back—looked like crude video game icons. Space Invaders or something like that”). Marq wants to investigate but finds himself sidelined courtesy of his right arm’s bizarre numbness, rendering the limb virtually useless. After the killer strikes again, Sage calls the police; she reputedly has had a vision of the murderer and is certain the “unique markings” on the victim’s skin are identical to hers. Only Marq, it seems, believes her, and the two soon learn they have a shocking connection to the killer as well as to a mysterious woman named Artemesia Burton. In this grim and engrossing tale, Mallery centers on three laudable characters—Sage, Marq, and the killer. Sage fears that she’s schizophrenic, while Marq’s co-workers deride him for his book smarts. The murderer, too, proves surprisingly engaging; he’s frighteningly meticulous but vulnerable, as when a not-so-simple body dump shows how easily he could get caught. Notwithstanding severed limbs, a meat cleaver, and blood galore, the novel somewhat mitigates the violence with a taut narrative that deftly highlights both the cast’s external and internal pain. A relatively early flashback pulls readers into the killer’s past, a darkly intriguing turn that, while quite revealing, stirs up further questions. The story’s latter half, in particular, hints at supernatural elements, but the author coats them in ambiguity until the sensational denouement.
A searing, curious look at ritualistic homicides boosts this striking thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2022
ISBN: 9781735338644
Page Count: 316
Publisher: TESSELESSET BOOKS
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2023
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
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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