A plodding, smarmy attempt to cash in on election-year politics that readers of all political persuasions will find...
Buffa aims for a sexy, “ripped-from-the-headlines” approach in this Washington-based political thriller.
Special Agent for the Secret Service Richard Bauman is accustomed to U.S. President Robert Constable’s sexual assignations: the president likes young women, and they like him. But this time something goes wrong and the woman who was having sex with the nation’s leader bursts out of the bedroom of the private suite Bauman’s guarding and announces that the president is dead. Bauman inexplicably lets the unknown woman leave and finds the naked president on the bed. Rather than call for help, he and another agent dress Constable’s remains in his pajamas and put him back to bed before sounding the alarm. Later, following Constable’s funeral, Sen. Bobby Hart is approached by Constable’s widow, former first lady Hillary, who asks him to investigate what she calls her husband’s murder. While the nation has been led to believe that Constable succumbed to natural causes, Hillary tells Bobby her husband was murdered by lethal injection and swears him to secrecy. Hart talks to reporter Quentin Burdick, who was writing a piece on a French company called Four Sisters and its head, Jean de la Valette, and comes to believe that the president’s slaying and his business dealings with Four Sisters are intertwined. The book is filled with improbable situations and achingly dull characters who interact with one another with a surplus of metaphors, and readers who like their thrillers active will find the author’s writing style sluggish, with much of the narrative devoted to descriptions of each character’s facial expressions, appearance, clothing, and mannerisms. The slow-moving tale will also disappoint readers who understand business inside the Beltway, as little of the literary real estate reflects the reality of how things work at the seat of government.
A plodding, smarmy attempt to cash in on election-year politics that readers of all political persuasions will find tasteless.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 9781943818280
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Polis Books
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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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