A fierce thriller that doesn’t offer many chances to catch a breath.
In Florentin’s (In the Talons of the Condor, 2013) thriller, a teenage girl’s search for her missing sister takes her into the seedy world of pornography and pedophiles.
Eighteen-year-old New Yorker Rachel Wallen’s younger adopted sister, Olivia, has been missing for four days. By visiting the runaway shelter where Olivia volunteered and perusing Olivia’s Yahoo Messenger, Rachel learns two startling bits of news: Her sibling was working as a stripper and chatting with Achara, a sex slave in Thailand who happens to be Olivia’s biological twin, about whom Rachel knew nothing. Rachel follows Olivia’s trail right into the homes of sleazy men who prefer underage girls (Rachel tells them she’s 14), hoping that one of them will know where Olivia is. Simultaneously, Rachel is looking for a way to bring Achara safely to the U.S. But she’ll soon discover that the worst of the men is the Webmaster, who tortures and murders young girls on a live feed for the highest bidder. Florentin’s passionate novel overflows with tension as Rachel encounters numerous suspicious, shady characters with new friend Sonia, whom she meets at the Pleasure Palace, a peep show where Olivia had been working under a pseudonym. Someone hires a hit man, too, and the Webmaster’s identity remains a secret until near the end. Rachel initiates her own investigation, which involves stealthily hacking into the men’s computers to find info (e.g., photos) related to Olivia, but she’s smart enough to cooperate with the steadfast Detective John McKenna, one of the book’s few admirable male characters. The author does seem to be criticizing the pornography industry in general, not just pedophiliac smut; love dolls at the Pleasure Palace are described as simultaneously disturbing and frivolous: Their open mouths are initially “a silent scream” but later “an extruded yawn.” Despite the story’s contentious subject matter, Florentin handles it with finesse and as much delicacy as possible; even torture sequences, including both male and female characters, are opportunities to elevate the suspense, not to generate discomfort by lingering on unsettling images. The final act is relentless, as Achara, armed with her (faux) passport, tries to flee Thailand and her captor, Tong. The Webmaster, meanwhile, has accumulated more than one potential victim for his latest smutty webcast.
A fierce thriller that doesn’t offer many chances to catch a breath.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
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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