A vibrant, intricate thriller with a resolute investigator seeking to expose secrets that involve murder and a fraught...
An Australian federal police officer discovers that some things “you can’t hide forever” when she becomes embroiled in a deadly mystery shrouded for 70 years.
Fans of conspiracy thrillers eagerly await the part when a shadowy figure warns the protagonist, who may know something but is unsure what: “This should be the end of it for you….Do yourself a favour, wait a few years and write a book complete with your own grassy knoll.” But the character never does, and Kate Austin is no exception. “Talented but underprepared,” the officer is installed as the head of a task force investigating the M.I. Boys, a small but “extremely violent, relentless” group whose ranks are growing with recruited “disaffected Middle Eastern youth.” The M.I. Boys are tied to the murders of two undercover agents in regard to a theft of munitions, but Austin begins to suspect that something other than terrorism is afoot as the body count escalates (one character compares her to Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote, in that, as with Austin, “murders seem to follow” Mrs. Fletcher around). But when a former lover becomes a victim, Austin vows, “Vengeance is my only closure.” Her probe unravels an elaborately tangled plot that dates back to the decades-old murder (ruled an accident at the time) of the Australian prime minister and, 30 years before that, to an Australian desert expedition led by the ill-fated Harold Lasseter. Lasseter claimed to have discovered a gold-bearing reef, adding what one character calls “a touch of Allan Quatermain” to the story. Austin’s intense inquiry leads to possibly sinister goings-on at a supersecret “communications facility.” In Austin, debut author Hahn has created a credible figure formidable enough to shoulder further adventures. He writes potent action scenes with a vivid sense of place. The tale remains immersive in its Australian patois (“You’re on your Pat Malone out here mate”) and landscapes (“The craft had completed a brief pass over the sheer red sandstone cliffs of Kings Canyon and its Wilderness Lodge. On the horizon, they could make out the outline of the monolith of Uluru and the domes of Kata Tjuta”). But context and Google can help keep readers from getting lost. This is an auspicious beginning of a planned trilogy.
A vibrant, intricate thriller with a resolute investigator seeking to expose secrets that involve murder and a fraught expedition.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-9617-6
Page Count: 584
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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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