All the Leonard fans who wisely boycotted last year's old dog of a parable, Touch, can rest easy: this—as the high-hip title announces—is vintage (if not stellar) Elmore, another edgy tale of crime and punishment in Detroit's outer limits that crackles with cool street-smarts and dark-humored urban ironies. Leonard's archest opening ever sets the tone, as bomb-squador Chris Mankowski answers a call to rescue a drag kingpin who's sitting on a dynamite-packed armchair wondering whether he can dive into his Jacuzzi before the chair blows. Turns out he can't: and that explosion is only the first to punctuate Leonard's knowing narration as he limns Mankowski's shift out of the bomb squad and into the Sex Crimes unit, where the tough but decent cop takes on the case of fledgling actress Greta Wyatt, who claims rape by a rich man named Woody. Even as Mankowski romances Greta, he finds that fat Woody is more victim than villain, a booze-befuddled sot who's a perfect mark for the school of sharks circling him, looking to eat his fortune. The sharpest teeth belong to ex-cons Robin Abbott and Skip Gibbs, former bomb-throwing 60's radicals hired by Woody's disinherited brother, Mark, to blow up Woody. When Mark fatally stumbles into the blast set for Woody, mean-spirited Robin and Skip go freelance, hatching an extortion plot that's helped along by Woody's loyal but all-too-greedy valet, ex-Black Panther Donnell Lewis—and run smack up against Mankowski, who's taken a shine to the hapless Woody. As Woody wobbles in his drunk's haze, cop and extortionists play out a game of wits that winds up as a lethal war of explosives in a wickedly inventive, droll climax. Leonard's usual superb pacing, uncanny ear for patois, and menagerie of quirky characters are here in full force; but this fails to match his best for its want of a truly riveting villain or hero (Woody and Donnell, sparkling creations, steal the show from the more thin-blooded Skip, Robin, and Mankowski). And, crucially, at bottom this is formula Leonard—a well-done variation, sure, but of a theme that's beginning to lose its bloom, if not its commercial appeal.
Pub Date: May 16, 1988
ISBN: 0062120352
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Arbor House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1988
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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