A well-crafted disaster novel that packs an emotional wallop.
In Kravchenko’s debut novel, a man seeks to locate his friends in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Carl Lundmark is a young Swedish man living in London who’s perpetually single and unhappily works hard at his hedge fund job to distract him from the emptiness of his life. Then he hears about an earthquake in the Indian Ocean on the news—a freak event that kicked up a tsunami that’s thought to have killed thousands in Southeast Asia. Carl’s recently married best friends,Kristoffer and Eva Berg, are in Thailand, which was one of the worst-hit areas: “Carl had exchanged texts with Kristoffer three days ago, or maybe four. They had landed in Bangkok, Kristoffer said….It was their honeymoon, for God’s sake. How could anything happen to them?” He manages to find the name of the resort where his friends were staying, only to learn that it was “all but obliterated” by the tsunami, and that Kristoffer and Eva are among the missing. He makes a spontaneous decision to fly to Thailand to try to find them, although he has no idea how he’ll do so. As Carl encounters the post-tsunami chaos on the ground, Kravchenko offers pre-tsunami stories of Kristoffer, Eva, and other tourists as their fates pull them toward the unforeseeable calamity. The prose is taut and vibrant, pulsing with Carl’s tense nervous energy: “Hospital staff…lifted a motionless woman from a stretcher that had been laid on the asphalt, and placed her on a trolley. Her hair and face were covered in dry blood and mud, her eyes closed, grimy arms spread, dangling.” The story manages to successfully balance the specific horrors of the 2004 tsunami with the personal lives of Carl, Kristoffer, and the others, resulting in a consistently surprising tale of friendship that delves into Swedish identity and questions of how best to live. There are a few moments of cultural analysis that feel clunky and didactic, but for the most part, the story is a page-turner with high psychological stakes.
A well-crafted disaster novel that packs an emotional wallop.Pub Date: April 28, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Threesixty Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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