A surprisingly tender story of a daughter devoted to knowing her father, even posthumously.
A woman’s Paris trip is an opportunity to learn all she can about her wealthy, reticent father, whose sudden death may reveal more secrets in Cooke’s (A Tale of Two Hotels, 2015, etc.) dramatic thriller.
Twenty-three-year-old New Yorker Sara Mammon knows very little about her dad, Saul, a zealous businessman currently living in France. So when he invites her for a Christmas visit in 1979, she takes a three-month leave of absence from her job. Hoping to better understand her father, Sara realizes that Saul’s ruthless in his business dealings, unconcerned with inciting people’s wrath. He, for one, promises the exclusive on his Moscow hotel’s imminent opening to the Russians but readily hands the scoop to someone else. Sara has a lot to contend with in Paris, starting with Saul’s uncivil, materialistic German girlfriend, Renata. There’s also Sara’s dalliance with French journalist Denys Déols, whose articles on Saul don’t paint her father in the brightest colors. But things take an appalling turn when Sara discovers Saul’s body; he’s dead of an apparent heart attack. She believes it’s murder and is determined to find the killer, but the suspect list isn’t brief. Saul, who made frequent excursions to Russia, may have been on the CIA’s payroll or a double agent for the KGB. There’s murder and mystery in Cooke’s tale, but it’s not truly a murder mystery. Saul himself is the enigma, more so than the peculiar circumstances surrounding his death. A complex character, he seems to reject all intimacy, likely due to being an outcast in his youth for uneven legs and an ear bandaged from surgery. The murder, meanwhile, hardly changes Sara’s purpose: she’s still learning about Saul; like meeting his (possible) CIA contact. Cooke’s narrative reads like poetry, but it’s neither verbose nor dismissive of the plot. For example, as an irate Sara waits on Déols’ doorstep: “The edge of stone beneath her buttocks was pointed, but not nearly so sharp as her thoughts of the journalist.” Sara may or may not identify the murderer(s), but it’s beside the point. Her riveting journey involves understanding Saul, in both life and death.
A surprisingly tender story of a daughter devoted to knowing her father, even posthumously.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4808-2104-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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