An often gripping postmodern crime novel that highlights the creative process.
A crime novelist’s fictional creations enter the real world in Sheppard’s metafictional debut novel.
New Yorker Evie Howland is in the middle of drafting the 16th book in her series of novels about New York City Detectives Carolyn Harding and Jay Ryan, and she’s feeling a bit stuck. She’s out of story ideas, and her characters are the impatient sort; if Evie doesn’t keep the plot moving along, they step out of the novel and into her apartment to make snarky comments about her wardrobe, her diet, and her writing clichés. (Only Evie can see them, though.) Her writing difficulties may be due to her engagement to charming billionaire Daniel Bradley and the pressures that come along with it—society parties, magazine profiles, and the judgment of her extremely wealthy soon-to-be in-laws. In addition, Daniel isn’t particularly supportive of her writing career. Still, she’s been able to keep her fiction and real life separate—until an article appears in the local newspaper about a murdered woman with the same name as one of her characters, killed in exactly the way Evie planned to kill her. In order to keep her darkest creations from haunting the real-life streets of New York City, Evie will need to overcome her blockage and write for her life—literally. Over the course of this novel, Sheppard writes with verve, whether she’s offering samples of Evie’s pulpy fiction or narrating as Evie herself, taking in her strange metafictional life: “The interior of Jay’s car is just as big, black and sexy as the outside. Unfortunately it’s also cold, since two of the side windows have been gunned in and there are bullet holes along one side.” The overall premise is a bit familiar, but Sheppard executes it inventively, revealing a deep knowledge of detective-novel conventions and a keen understanding of human behavior to boot. The book is engaging through all its twists and turns, and readers will be happy to learn that a sequel is in the works.
An often gripping postmodern crime novel that highlights the creative process.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-648-87700-4
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Ruby Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 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
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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