An energetic, densely plotted tale that might have benefited from a stronger edit.
Two men try to take down an American secret society bent on global domination in Priligkos’ debut thriller.
In 2015, during a live broadcast on a Chicago TV talk show, noted author and philosopher Jason Hannibal vows to reveal a scandal involving powerful people. Police inspector Marcos Ligos is watching the show at home when the screen turns black. Marcos saved Jason from an assassination attempt while working a security detail a decade prior, so he assumes the worst and goes looking for him. Indeed, Jason narrowly escaped members of a clandestine group known as the Physicists, which has been around since the end of World War II, promising its recruits a spiritual “Rebirth.” A disillusioned Jason left the Physicists 25 years ago and kept himself hidden, but he’s now an easy target—especially because someone killed his mob boss protector. (The group has also pinned a couple of murders on Jason.) After he meets up with Marcos, Jason surmises that they have mere hours until daylight, when they’ll be at risk of being spotted. In the meantime, the men try to find a golden key that will give them access to a secret room containing evidence that the Physicists have been controlling citizens and spearheading numerous, significant events, such as the Watergate scandal. Priligkos’ novel is packed with invigorating elements; for example, as the two main characters rush to beat the sunrise deadline, they also dodge a hit man pursuing them and struggle to keep Marcos’ involvement secret, in order to protect his 11-year-old son. It’s also a particular treat for conspiracy theorists, as it turns out that the Physicists had a hand in everything from Vietnam to Hollywood films. Some problems, however, hurt the story, including vague descriptions (such as one of an injured character who “drop[s] down full of blood”); references to Marcos as both “Marc” and “Mark”; and Jason citing The Omen as a film from 1973, even though it was actually released three years later. Likewise, a few notions come across as demeaning, such as an assertion that gay men in “professional fields” and women in powerful posts owe their successes to the Physicists’ manipulations. However, the book’s ending is undeniably memorable.
An energetic, densely plotted tale that might have benefited from a stronger edit.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 445
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2016
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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