A first-rate cast drives this brisk, exhilarating action tale.
A single mother leads a high-speed chase in order to save her teen daughter in this thriller.
California real estate agent Stephanie Power is making time for her daughter. While her ex-husband drags out an ugly custody dispute, Stephanie takes 16-year-old Libby on a Texas road trip in their brand-new RV. Unfortunately, trouble lurks, as Libby and the RV vanish at a gas station. The kidnapper calls Stephanie with a bizarre order—drive a BMW north with the gas pedal floored. The caller, German Ilsa Bakke, is hot off an armored-car heist. Though she and her crew separated, Ilsa has the loot and wants Stephanie to distract the cops pursuing the getaway car. She tells Stephanie: “If you stop for any reason, kid dies. If you crash, kid dies. If the cops catch you, kid dies. If you make it for one hour you will see your kid again. Clear?” The police are no help, convinced that the woman behind the BMW’s wheel is the robber. But Stephanie’s boyfriend, Dan Crockett, does what he can as he watches TV news coverage of the chase. Things get even more complicated when members of the still-at-large heist crew join the pursuit to get their hands on the stolen goods. Red’s kinetic story hits the ground running, opening with the mother and daughter on the road and accelerating quickly with Libby in peril. Copious flashbacks follow, including scenes of Stephanie’s failed marriage and the robbers plotting the heist, but these brief subplots hardly affect the narrative momentum. Red, who’s written or co-written such classic horror films as The Hitcher and Near Dark, specializes in scene-stealing baddies. Ilsa is no exception; just when she seems sympathetic, her sadistic, possibly psychotic side reveals itself. Stephanie is equally indelible, utilizing skills she’s picked up from her Hollywood stuntman father. While the story offers few surprises, readers will bask in the taut action scenes and blistering final act. There’s dark humor as well, such as two wounded guys from the heist strolling into a CVS for painkillers.
A first-rate cast drives this brisk, exhilarating action tale.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-3-9603460-3-6
Page Count: 297
Publisher: Editions Moustache
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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