An exciting tale of vicious predators on land and at sea.
Engaged grad students in the Bahamas tangle with deadly sea creatures and an even deadlier cartel in this tense thriller.
Cael Seabrook and his future wife, Aja, see their summer trip to Bimini in 1984 as “an early honeymoon.” They’re on a beautiful tropical island, living in a rental house overlooking a lagoon, but the two are working on their doctoral dissertations, as well; Aja studies cone snails, while Seabrook catches, tags, and tracks juvenile lemon sharks. It’s dangerous work, as cone snails are one of the world’s most venomous animals, and Seabrook, out on a boat alone, could run into aggressive tiger sharks. Their most unsettling encounter, however, doesn’t involve sea creatures. An armed man, with scarred holes where his ears once were, forces Aja, a certified emergency medical technician, to tend to his gunshot wounds. He eventually leaves the couple’s home, but it’s clear he belongs to a cartel, and Seabrook and Aja worry that he’ll someday return. Indeed, cartel members do rear their ugly heads but with an unexpected demand: They want the $50 million that the “Earless Man” evidently stole. The Dores cartel, which is notorious for “brazen acts of violence,” sends its deadliest hit man, Pelon, who has slaughterhouse saws and grinders for torturing and murdering victims. The cartel abducts Aja and threatens to take her life unless Seabrook comes up with cash that he doesn’t have. As Aja searches for a way to escape her captors, Seabrook uses his expertise and experience to try to appease the cartel just long enough to save his true love.
The first half of Butcher’s novel is a slow but riveting build to fierce confrontations with evil. For example, the appealing couple initially befriends their landlord’s children, whom they affectionately dub “the Sea Cherubs.” The three kids get their own subplot as they desperately try to evade their abusive father. Around the same time, Seabrook spots signs of a sea creature with a powerful bite; when he finally sees this “Razormouth,” it’s an “otherworldly fish” that he’s convinced is an entirely new species. Once the cartel villains take center stage in the latter half, the author amps up the suspense in earnest. Pelon and cartel head Concha Dores are revealed as cold, ferocious individuals who take glee in hurting others; indeed, the book features copious scenes of bloody and visceral imagery. But it’s Seabrook and Aja’s fight against a menacing enemy that has the most impact, as the nail-biting tension rarely lets up. Butcher also offers alluring prose, as when describing the water’s rainbow hues: “some gilded and electric, others mystical, others dark and opaque, and others celestial and crystalline.” Moreover, the lovingly detailed sea creatures become characters in their own rights, from the mysterious and elusive Razormouth to Clara, a baby nurse shark that seems quite fond of Aja’s belly rubs. Some even play a part in the superb final act, which offers thorough resolution and a surprise or two.
An exciting tale of vicious predators on land and at sea.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7379603-0-0
Page Count: 399
Publisher: Deep Reef Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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