An action-packed, deeply paranoid adventure in which all those conspiracy theories, ranging from UFOs to the Kennedy...
A conspiracy theorist gets into hot water when he becomes the subject of an arcane frame-up.
Talk radio host Noory (Talking to the Dead, 2011, etc.) mines his own storied career on Coast to Coast AM for this implausible but wildly entertaining postmodern take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The author’s fictional avatar is Greg Nowell, the Los Angeles–based host of Night Talk with the Nighthawk, one of those witching-hour broadcasts that warms the hearts of truck drivers, insomniacs, and tinfoil hat fashionistas. “What you call paranoia, I call genuine concerns,” Nowell explains. “Our government is not perfect; it spies on us and oftentimes it acts stupid. No business is perfect.” One night, the radio host gets an unhinged call from meth-addicted hacker Ethan Shaw, who declares that Greg has killed him and then sails out the 12th-story window of the building across from the studio. The shock jock finds himself in deep trouble when agents from a mysterious government agency accuse him of having received both funds and files from the late hacker just before his death. Soon Greg is on the run with a young woman, Alyssa Neal, who has become collateral damage in the ongoing explosion of his life. From here, the novel plays out like an action-packed combination of The X-Files and Six Days of the Condor as Greg and Alyssa struggle to work out where Ethan’s bread crumbs of data lead, not to mention playing a tense cat-and-mouse game with an insane but determined assassin who has been set on their trail. Ultimately, the conspiracy at the heart of Greg's unraveling is something of a MacGuffin, but it’s a good one that ties together the Snowden revelations, the National Reconnaissance Office, the surveillance state, and, yes, aliens.
An action-packed, deeply paranoid adventure in which all those conspiracy theories, ranging from UFOs to the Kennedy assassination, turn out to be true after all.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7878-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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