Lack of imagination dooms a potentially fascinating subject, in a disappointing first from British journalist Walters.
Debut thriller, mining the history of the British Free Corps, a regiment of English soldiers that fought for Hitler, stars a British secret agent who turns traitor to save his wife.
Captured while fighting with partisans in Crete, John Lockhart is offered a deal: if he spies on his former comrades, the life of his wife Anna, prisoner in a concentration camp, will be secure. He agrees, intending to feed the Nazis false information, but only succeeds in getting his Cretan band of fighters killed. A series of fishy career decisions follows. Time and again, Lockhart elects to serve the Germans, excusing himself by deciding he’ll be better able to spy on them. Or perhaps it’s to protect his wife. Or perhaps (the reader may be excused for thinking) it’s because he will be shot otherwise. The story is largely taken up by Lockhart’s agonizing over these decisions, which culminate in his accepting the command of the British Free Corps, with the rank of Hauptsturmführer. Along the way, he learns that the Germans are manufacturing nerve gas, which they plan to use in rockets aimed at London. With the help of Leni, a Nazi hooker with a heart of gold, he foils that plan. He remains, though, sadly ineffectual. Information is obtained mainly by dumb luck. Lockhart’s spycraft reaches the dizzying heights of advising that a creaky door will make less noise if it’s shut rapidly. The narrative cuts away periodically to the present day, where John’s daughter Amy is excavating her father’s past, seeking to prove that he isn’t really a traitor. In these sections, as in Lockhart’s musings about his wife, the sentimentality reaches fever pitch while the action grinds to a halt. It also cuts away to Anna in her camp, and to the past of one of the British fascists, piling on the pages without adding much interest.
Lack of imagination dooms a potentially fascinating subject, in a disappointing first from British journalist Walters.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-7015-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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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