The Desperate Hours on crank, with a deeply unsettling spiritual spin.
Fourteen years after he vanished from the bestseller lists, Green (The Juror, 1995, etc.) is back with a tale of two losers who see a Georgia family’s lottery jackpot as their ticket to nirvana.
Shaw McBride and Romeo Zdenko are just passing through Brunswick, Ga., when they hear that a local couple, Mitch and Patsy Boatwright, have won $318 million. Shaw’s facility at ferreting out online information about the family—especially about daughter Tara, 21, who wishes she were just passing through Brunswick as well—persuades him that they can grab half the payout if only they can persuade the Boatwrights that they’re crazy and remorseless. Their scheme depends on nothing more than threats. If Mitch doesn’t appear at a press conference to announce that Shaw was an old acquaintance who’d asked Mitch to pick up some lottery tickets for him too, Romeo, who’s driving around the area from one set of friends and relatives to the next, will start killing whoever is closest. At first the scheme works improbably well, considering that although Shaw is a con man with a gift for telling people what they want to hear, Romeo is neither a killer nor a mental giant. As days pass, however, things start to change, and not in the ways you might expect. Instead of ratcheting up the tension, Green begins to plumb the unexpected depths of his characters. Romeo finds his only peace in caring for the dying father of the trailer-park queen who picked him up at a bar. Ineffectual local peace officer Burris Jones, aka Deppity Dawg, rouses himself on behalf of his high-school sweetheart Nell Boatwright, Tara’s grandmother, who hasn’t given him the time of day for a generation. And Tara, who craves excitement and maybe submission, begins to confuse imperious, insinuating Shaw with God.
The Desperate Hours on crank, with a deeply unsettling spiritual spin.Pub Date: July 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-53896-1
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.
Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.
The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247327-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender.
In Crouch’s sci-fi–driven thriller, a machine designed to help people relive their memories creates apocalyptic consequences.
In 2018, NYPD Detective Barry Sutton unsuccessfully tries to talk Ann Voss Peters off the edge of the Poe Building. She claims to have False Memory Syndrome, a bewildering condition that seems to be spreading. People like Ann have detailed false memories of other lives lived, including marriages and children, but in “shades of gray, like film noir stills.” For some, like Ann, an overwhelming sense of loss leads to suicide. Barry knows loss: Eleven years ago, his 15-year-old daughter, Meghan, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Details from Ann’s story lead him to dig deeper, and his investigation leads him to a mysterious place called Hotel Memory, where he makes a life-altering discovery. In 2007, a ridiculously wealthy philanthropist and inventor named Marcus Slade offers neuroscientist Helena Smith the chance of a lifetime and an unlimited budget to build a machine that allows people to relive their memories. He says he wants to “change the world.” Helena hopes that her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, will benefit from her passion project. The opportunity for unfettered research is too tempting to turn down. However, when Slade takes the research in a controversial direction, Helena may have to destroy her dream to save the world. Returning to a few of the themes he explored in Dark Matter (2016), Crouch delivers a bullet-fast narrative and raises the stakes to a fever pitch. A poignant love story is woven in with much food for thought on grief and the nature of memories and how they shape us, rounding out this twisty and terrifying thrill ride.
An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-5978-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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