Like running up a spiral staircase—you might see where it’s going, but the twists will leave you dizzy.
In Apseloff’s (Overdose, 2013, etc.) medical thriller, a doctor finds that recent strange events, such as his inability to remember an entire day, connect to his all-expenses-paid trip to Italy.
Dr. Jake Warner would much rather forget Alicia. She walked into the emergency room, her foot severed, with a gun and her dead father’s diary in her handbag. He plans to use psychiatrist Dr. Abrams’ “memory ablation,” which was used elsewhere to wipe a patient’s memory of watching his wife bleed to death from a car accident. When Jake wins a sweepstakes for a European vacation—strangely, it’s courtesy of a grocery store chain called Colossus—it sounds too good to be true. Maybe it is. He starts seeing a correlation between what happened to Lyle, Alicia’s father, who couldn’t remember 10 years of his life, and his own new situation, starting with Colossus’ peculiar “rules,” including limited communication with the outside world. The book moves forward with impressive momentum: Jake, a resident, moves from his ER rotation to the psych ward; he’s only there for a week before asking for two weeks off and flying to Milan. The story piles on the questions, from why Alicia was carrying a gun to why Charlotte, the British model Jake meets on the plane, seems a little too interested in him. Jake meets another woman, this one an American, Tykeria, and he’s smitten; their romance is coupled with the intrigue of solving the mystery of Lyle’s diary, in which he detailed dreams that seem to be coded interpretations of his lost memories. Amid the abundance of plot twists, the story features a number of unnerving moments, including Charlotte’s obsession over Jake, a stranger trying to access Tykeria’s hotel door, Tykeria and Jake’s thinking that they’re being followed, and more than one seemingly inexplicable death. Apseloff unravels the surprises one, maybe two, at a time and keeps everything from becoming a jumbled mess. By the end, most but not all of the questions are resolved, with a coda that readers, unlike Lyle, won’t forget.
Like running up a spiral staircase—you might see where it’s going, but the twists will leave you dizzy.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 353
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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