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MANHATTAN MORTAR ATTACKS

A mortar capable of hitting very specific targets is in the hands of terrorists taking aim at Manhattan in Diogenes’ novel. 

U.S. operative Sam Adams witnesses firsthand the damage that a mortar can cause while attending Dubai’s IDEX (International Defense Exposition) to peruse the latest weapons. The Chinese Super Rapid Automatic Mortar (SRAM) is even more sophisticated and precise than its Swiss counterpart, which is unfortunate because two units of SRAM have been stolen. Back in Manhattan, Sam tries to convince government officials that the SRAMs may be used in a terrorist attack, while Professor Edward Mossad, spearheading a covert operation, manipulates the media to shift the blame for impending assaults onto other political groups. The author (Reformers, 2011, etc.) excels at displaying the media’s influence, taking a rather cynical view: TV and Internet personalities respond to the mortar attacks with conjecture or simply misinformation, and press conferences are mostly useless. It’s fitting that Sam suggests acquiring control of the media as a maneuver. People’s behavior mirrors the media’s approach: the professor instigating the bombings asks students to sign a peace pledge and, in an amusing scene, marching pacifists attack hecklers. The novel is sometimes too obvious: Sam’s walk through a club of debaucheries is a transparent analogy for the corruption of political figures and a police command post named “Paris Hilton” (via a handwritten sign) is only introduced for a joke referencing the bunker’s “rear entrance.” The author fares better with more subtle nuances, such as the scene in which Mossad neglects the willing female lying in bed in favor of three TVs broadcasting news coverage. Strong action sequences round out the story, while drama is heightened by Sam’s missing fiancée, Mary—though she only has a brief appearance before disappearing. Mossad’s lady friend, TV reporter Roberta, proves to be more intriguing. Devastating mortar attacks, but it’s the planning and aftermath of those attacks that will hold readers’ attention.

 

Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2011

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 543

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Review Posted Online: April 2, 2012

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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THE NIGHTINGALE

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

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