Green’s novels may not come around often, but when they do, they hit hard and stay with you long after the end.
In the wake of a tragic death and a kidnapping, a dysfunctional family at the center of Georgia high society discovers painful truths in the shadows just beyond Savannah’s historic gas lamps and gazebos.
When ruthless land developer Archibald Guzman is arrested for the arson death of a local drunk, he attempts to buy the support of the Musgrove family, a crumbling yet still influential cornerstone of the Savannah elite. Morgana, the headstrong matriarch and, now that her husband is dead, proprietor of the investigation agency that is one of the family's businesses, accepts the controversial case in return for the promise of a windfall she hopes will slow their eroding finances. She knows the accompanying scandal will further strain her already embattled family, and soon they are all working at cross purposes. Ransom, her rebellious vagabond-by-choice son, sees Guzman as an enemy of the homeless, and Jaq, her aspiring filmmaker granddaughter, wants social justice for her immolated friend. The rest of the family is pulled along reluctantly, steeling themselves for the impending social fallout. Anonymous threats evolve into acts of actual violence as the amateur sleuths get closer to uncovering ugly truths about Savannah’s racially charged present and past, some far too close to home. The family must decide whether to band together against their desperate adversaries or agree to dangerous compromises that could tear them apart. In his first novel in more than a decade, Edgar Award winner Green delivers a gripping and expertly researched Southern literary thriller that is anything but cozy. Most powerful is the novel’s exploration of contemporary social issues like homelessness, privilege, and familial legacies built from slavery. Through masterful storytelling, Green turns the quaint and eclectic tourist town of Savannah into a character as conflicted and complex as the rest of the novel’s ensemble.
Green’s novels may not come around often, but when they do, they hit hard and stay with you long after the end.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-76744-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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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