Lean work, with every word counting and adding up to more than most authors land in twice the space.
Tight, swift debut thriller from the co-screenwriter of the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma about a crack assassin hired to rub out his father.
Highlights of Haas’s cinematic thriller include a cross-country junket, quick reversals, lightning violence and a surprising denouement. On the road goes a “silver bear” (the term Russians use for assassins who earn top dollar because their shots never miss), prowling from Boston to Los Angeles. The “bear,” using the name Columbus, stalks congressman Abe Mann, who fathered the boy with Amanda B., a black prostitute. After giving birth to Columbus, Amanda turns up dead, stabbed in the neck in circumstances never explained. Mann’s possible involvement in the case and the cruel abandonment of his son help readers swallow a premise, reminiscent of The Manchurian Candidate, that an offspring might assassinate his famous parent. By telling the story from the assassin’s point of view, Haas layers on novelistic texture that a film version may miss. In chilling interior passages echoing The Day of the Jackal, the “bear” explicates the cold-blooded methods that make him a top killer. All the while, Haas stokes sympathy for his anti-hero. The assassin’s back story leads to a foster home where Columbus endures abuse and then to a juvenile detention center where he serves time after the killing of his foster mother. Post detention, Columbus initiates a touching relationship with a young woman at the same time he’s recruited as an assassin. The two pursuits clash, as his handlers had forewarned, and, to save his girlfriend’s life, Columbus brutally dispatches and abandons her. But having awakened tender feelings, she haunts his memory. He’s left wondering about her in a coda that points to a series on page and screen.
Lean work, with every word counting and adding up to more than most authors land in twice the space.Pub Date: July 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-933648-44-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
This thriller aims right for the heart and never lets go.
A tense thriller explores the bond between sisters and family dynamics that give new meaning to the term “dysfunctional.”
Three years ago, 17-year-old Emma Tanner and her 15-year-old sister, Cassandra, left home, disappearing into the night; as Walker's (All Is Not Forgotten, 2016, etc.) book opens, Cass shows up at her family’s house—without Emma. Dr. Abby Walker of the FBI, a forensic psychiatrist who’s been on the case from the beginning, is desperate to find out what happened and to find Emma before it’s too late. Cass tells Abby she and Emma had been arguing the night they took off and that it soon became obvious that Emma was packing up to leave. Cass, hoping to get her sister in trouble, hid in the car when Emma drove off, heading to the beach, where she was met by a man and woman Cass didn't recognize. When Cass revealed herself, they decided to take her with them as they left for a remote island off the coast of Maine. Emma was pregnant, Cass says, and the couple had offered to help her, but what they really had planned was to keep the baby for themselves. Cass finally managed to escape, she says, but without Emma. It’s a harrowing tale, and Cass says all she wants is to find Emma, but Abby suspects she's hiding something. Cass’ first-person narrative, interspersed with Abby’s investigation, paints a shocking picture of Cass’ ordeal and her family’s disturbing history. Her mother, Judy Martin, has always used her beauty and charm to manipulate her family, and her girls had to flatter her to win her affection. She was jealous of the attention given to her beautiful daughters, which threatened her fragile ego, and she was always scheming to get what she wanted—even seducing her stepson, Hunter, who was obsessed with Emma. Cass is a survivor, forced to become an adult very quickly, and readers will root for her as she tells her disturbing story and looks back on what could have been, when hope was all she and Emma had.
This thriller aims right for the heart and never lets go.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-14143-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.
The Sisterhood takes on yet another evildoer in their endless quest to right wrongs against unjustly maligned women.
Architect Isabelle Flanders’s life was destroyed when her coldly ambitious employee Rosemary Hershey framed her for vehicular manslaughter and stole her ideas and her fiancé Bobby Harcourt. Now the Sisterhood (The Jury, 2005, etc.) has devised a diabolical plan to help her get revenge and recover her reputation. Wealthy Sisterhood stalwart Myra Rutledge installs Isabelle in a luxurious office and buys a Virginia property to set up a bogus contest in which local architects will be invited to design a sumptuous horse farm, planning to make Isabelle and Rosemary the only finalists. Meanwhile, Bobby, long fed up with Rosemary’s greed, sues for divorce, planning to start his own architectural firm. Rosemary, who’s receiving anonymous letters reminding her that it was she and not innocent Isabelle who ran down and killed a family, is sinking into a funk as the Sisterhood increases the pressure. A rainy night in a cemetery, bogus snakes and a broken rope finally get Rosemary to confess and leave the Sisterhood ready to plot their next adventure.
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7278-6349-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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