There are surprises aplenty, but this time the ambitious scope—the anatomy of suburban vice—works against suspense; there...
How much do you trust your children, and what would you do if your efforts to keep tabs on them pushed them even further away?
Adam Baye is a good kid, but ever since he gave up hockey, the sport that seemed destined to finance his college education, his parents, a New Jersey transplant surgeon and a Manhattan lawyer, have been worried. So Mike and Tia install spyware on their son’s computer. Once they can follow his every keystroke, visit every site he has logged onto and read every e-mail he has sent and received, they quickly realize that Adam is keeping dangerous secrets from them—so dangerous, in fact, that when he goes AWOL one night and refuses to answer his cell phone, Mike snoops further, using a GPS tracking service to follow Adam to Club Jaguar, way on the other side of the tracks. For his pains, Mike gets beaten up, then pulled in by the FBI, who tell him that the club, which ostensibly provides a haven where teens can safely act out, is a cover for some major felonies. What do the Bayes’ problems have to do with the thoughtless remark with which schoolteacher Joe Lewiston ruined the life of Adam’s sister Jill’s best friend, Yasmin Novak? Or the revelation that desperately ill Lucas Loriman’s father can’t donate a kidney to his son because he’s not the boy’s father? Or the murdered Jane Doe whom Essex County Chief Investigator Loren Muse (The Woods, 2007, etc.) is trying to identify?
There are surprises aplenty, but this time the ambitious scope—the anatomy of suburban vice—works against suspense; there are just too many cutaways to other embattled characters you want to root for but can’t remember why.Pub Date: April 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-525-95060-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2008
Come for the mystery; stay for the taut suspense, the unique heroine—and of course, the ugly, loyal dog.
A deaf woman and her dog take on the world—or at least a callous, murdering sociopath—in Gudenkauf’s (Missing Pieces, 2016, etc.) latest.
After losing her hearing in a freak hit-and-run accident that also killed a woman, Amelia has struggled with alcoholism and unemployment and is finally striving to get her life together. She finds peace on the water, kayaking or paddleboarding with her service dog, Stitch, another survivor and misfit, until the day she discovers a body left in a shallow channel. Shocked not only by her discovery, but also by the realization that she used to be friends with the victim, Gwen, Amelia also worries that the publicity surrounding her 911 call might lead the killer right to her doorstep. In the meantime, she takes a job doing clerical work for a doctor friend of her estranged husband, himself a doctor, and she begins to wonder if Gwen may have been silenced because of a secret she discovered about something or someone in the medical community. Someone clearly has his or her eye on Amelia and is working to discredit her with both boss and husband, so she must be close to finding out the truth. Gudenkauf has created a memorable character in Amelia. Self-deprecating and sometimes angry, her candid voice is a breath of fresh air and an antidote to traditional thriller heroines. In addition, she is self-reliant and strong. The plot contains some clever twists, and the final showdown crackles with tension. It’s hard not to root for Amelia and Stitch; flawed as they are, they’re tough, engaging fighters.
Come for the mystery; stay for the taut suspense, the unique heroine—and of course, the ugly, loyal dog.Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1995-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.
Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.
If you’re a little squeamish about worms, you’re really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: “His throat was just gone,” says the man who found the body. “Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something….” Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stage—and it doesn’t help Anderson’s world-weariness when the evil doesn’t stop once Terry’s in the ground. Natch, there’s a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King’s early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King’s concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he’s at his best, as always, when he’s painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: “June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack.” Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity’s head caves in “as if it had been made of papier-mâché rather than bone.” And then there are those worms. Yuck.
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8098-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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