The investigation is a bit sparse, but the menacing killer terrifies and entertains.
In Krebs’ (Fractured Persona, 2011) thriller, a writer tries to help police stop a serial killer, but he finds himself at the center of the investigation when he becomes the murderer’s new obsession.
Former investigative reporter Benjamin Tucker is having trouble following up his hit true-crime novel, Deception. His offer to aid Cary, North Carolina, cops search for a serial killer is, at least in part, so he’ll have material for his next book. But Ben’s mentioning his involvement with the taskforce on a TV interview unfortunately catches the killer’s attention. The murderer, who’s been decapitating female victims, next goes after someone close to Ben, making the writer a possible target as well as a police suspect. He struggles to help track down the killer, whose constant contact with Ben involves threats against wife Maggie and Special Agent Lainie MacKenzie, an FBI profiler whom Ben gets to know quite well. Krebs’ protagonist is multifaceted and endlessly fascinating. He’s linked to girlfriend Christine’s murder from nearly two decades ago when he was 18—a rape/mutilation death that uncannily resembles the present-day murders. Ben’s home life is also brimming with melodrama, including a volatile relationship with ex-wife Jennifer and tension with Maggie, whose friends and family believe Ben married her—CEO of a department-store empire—for money. Yet Ben clearly loves Maggie and treats stepdaughter Julie as his own, which only heightens the unmistakable sexual tension between him and Lainie. Krebs expertly weaves suspense with welcome breeziness: Ben often has a revolver handy—a killer is apparently following him, after all—but scenes feel lighthearted, with the narrative repeatedly referring to the gun by its absurd name, Pure Reason. On the mystery front, there isn’t much. Ben scours some crime scenes for clues, but the story’s latter half consists primarily of the writer and Lainie staying at his home and waiting for the murderer to stop by. That doesn’t much diminish the intensity, which includes more murders, Ben pursuing the killer on foot, and a few gleefully cringe-worthy moments: for instance, victims’ heads aren’t with the bodies, but they eventually pop up.
The investigation is a bit sparse, but the menacing killer terrifies and entertains.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-93-571136-0
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Peak City Publishing, LLC.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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