A top-notch mystery with ever escalating suspense and a satisfying payoff.
Old money is the target of a calculating stalker in this engrossing thriller.
The target in this mystery by Nordstrom (Reflections in Gold, 2009, etc.) is Amy Granville Fontaine, the heir to a Northwest lumber fortune. At the novel’s start, divorcée Amy is gaining a sterling reputation as a painter of seascapes in the greater Portland, Oregon, area. She soon meets art critic Harold Gorman, a widower whose wife died under mysterious circumstances. The two are soon discussing the nature of Amy’s work: “It’s a somber observation, but I wonder what direction your work might have taken had you not become so familiar with the tension between darkness and light,” says Hal. They quickly become close, to the dismay of Amy’s daughter, Monique; Monique’s boyfriend, Ralph; and Amy’s friend Diane Demaris, a gallery owner. All are concerned with Harold’s intentions toward the heiress. As Diane tells her, “You are a very eligible, and extremely desirable divorcée. For some men, there’s never ‘enough money.’ Think about it.” Shortly after the pair announces their engagement, strange things start to happen at Pelican Rest, Amy’s vacation home in coastal Oregon. At first, it’s a strange man’s face in her front window, but the incidents become increasingly violent, unsettling Amy. Since the stalker seems to know her every move, every male around her is a suspect. Amy eventually stops being a victim and goes on the offensive, leading to a terrifying climax. Nordstrom does an admirable job limning Amy’s rarified world and creates believably flawed characters. He slowly intensifies the suspense, so readers can well understand Amy’s mounting fear (it’s not paranoia if people are out to get you). One drawback is that the stalker’s identity becomes evident early, but while the reader may have a good idea what’s going on, none of the characters ever do until it’s too late. An element of doubt lingers right through to the end of this captivating thriller.
A top-notch mystery with ever escalating suspense and a satisfying payoff.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5114-6888-6
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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
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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