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 best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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