A complex but readable Nazi-themed thriller.
The star couple in Cooper’s series investigates a Nazi plot that may still be in motion today.
The first timeline of Cooper’s novel is set in Germany near the end of World War II. The SS recruits a German American scientist named Walter Muller, and they plan to infiltrate a research facility in Maine to use DNA to build a “superior” race and a Fourth Reich. Shortly after Muller’s arrival in Maine, he meets and marries another conspirator, Catherine Freeman. In the present day, after some Nazi artifacts turn up, college science professor Brad Parker works with his romantic partner, police Lt. Karen Richmond, to interview with a man named Mark Carlson, who may know something about the Nazis’ interest in genetic engineering. Carlson is a former SS officer who defected and became an FBI agent. He has reason to believe his lover came to the U.S. during the war as a spy to conduct experiments with DNA, hoping to create an Aryan race. Brad, deeply skeptical of the plot, notes, “That’s impossible. How could anyone in the forties imagine the advances that would eventually take place in molecular biology?” The novel then flashes back to the 1950s, when scientists discovered the double helix structure of DNA, which seems to help Catherine and Muller in their pursuit. The two parallel stories continue to develop: We see Catherine and Muller in the past studying DNA with the hopes of using it to build a new race, and Brad and Karen investigating that research. A large part of the book is told from the point of view of Nazis in the past, including their experiments, which gives the novel its ominous mood. This adds some needed tension because there doesn’t feel like there’s much of a threat in the present storyline: Everyone who played a part in the original plot is either elderly or dead. Still, Brad and Karen share a lot of witty banter, and watching them unravel the plot is compelling enough to keep the reader turning the pages.
A complex but readable Nazi-themed thriller.Pub Date: June 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781633814028
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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