A family-driven crime novel with literary sensibilities that rounds many a corner, if not always at top speed.
Two men entangled in a criminal enterprise face the prospect that they could betray each other.
Several key elements of this novel will be familiar to readers of Galloway’s previous book, Just Thieves (2021)—close friends are embroiled in the lower levels of a criminal enterprise, sketchy on the details, until one of them throws a wrench into their joint existence. The two men here, widower Al and divorced father Peck, are also half brothers. Al’s hardware store and the Flying F, a bar Peck used to own but where he now just works, are two pieces in a money laundering scheme overseen by a man whose name is represented by a long black bar. Things are OK if tense until Al’s hard drive, reportedly containing $7 million worth of cryptocurrency, disappears, and Al is convinced Peck stole it, because he gave Peck the passwords years ago—and the drive may also contain incriminating information that Al was prepared to hand over to the district attorney at Peck’s expense. Then Al himself is in the wind, and Peck has to become the leader and not the follower, an uncomfortable role: “I wasn’t sure I could be on the other end of the leash, the one needing to take control when necessary.” The first-person narration switches between Peck and his 16-year-old daughter, Sara, wise to her father’s criminal enterprise beyond her years, who has her own ideas of how to unstick her father and uncle from their situation. Galloway’s latest noir has a lot of stuff going on—family drama, betrayal, poisonings, kidnappings, jaunts to Mexico—but the narrative proceeds at a more halting pace. Characters talk at and around each other in rapid exchanges almost as much as they talk directly to each other. Readers who like their noir thrillers extra heavy on the thrills may want more, but when the novel ends, rather abruptly, they’ll also find the characters easy to miss.
A family-driven crime novel with literary sensibilities that rounds many a corner, if not always at top speed.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781685891817
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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