Overly detailed, but offers interesting characters, plenty of excitement and the pleasure of seeing a complicated plan...
A respected surgeon and decorated Army veteran wrestles with ghosts from the past in this thriller.
Dr. Michael Reece has come far from his early days growing up in an orphanage called Sycamore House. A skilled ob-gyn surgeon and father of two, he’s also a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, where he lost his lower left leg and earned two medals. Now, for his bravery in action, he’s about to be awarded the highest military decoration: the Medal of Honor. The publicity fervor that ensues throws a spotlight not just on the doctor, but also on Sen. James Haxton of North Carolina, Reece’s mentor and Sycamore House’s benefactor, who is the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. Strangely, Reece hasn’t kept in touch with Haxton. But when someone murders the senator in his secluded getaway, Reece must confront a carefully buried past. His survivor’s guilt stems from more than just wartime experience. In his debut novel, Campbell—himself a decorated veteran, physician and member of the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps—supplies insider details that enliven his scenes of battle, surgery and award-ceremony protocol. The story of Reece’s heroism is told too many times, and the level of detail (such as which child sits next to which adult in the car) can bog things down. But when the action does pick up midway, it’s exciting and involving, even if the nature of Reece’s secrets isn’t hard to guess. Once trouble begins, Reece’s reasons for not just going to the authorities are less flimsy than in the usual thriller; they tie in nicely with the leave-no-man-behind ethos that earned him his medals. To some, Campbell’s uncritical presentation of the military and war (though not politics) may seem overly rosy, even sentimental; others will enjoy the sense of brotherhood and respect for sacrifice. A satisfying ending sees an appropriate distribution of rewards.
Overly detailed, but offers interesting characters, plenty of excitement and the pleasure of seeing a complicated plan coalesce.Pub Date: March 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482747812
Page Count: 492
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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