Another riveting, taut, and timely adventure with engaging characters and a great premise.
In this eighth series thriller, a pilot who can float while invisible investigates a sniper targeting far-right extremists.
Will Stewart, a pilot at Wisconsin’s Essex County Airport, has a way of getting involved in tense, high-stakes rescues and criminal investigations. An accident mysteriously endowed him with the ability to render himself imperceptible to the naked eye, and also float in a way that isn’t subject to inertia or gravity; over time, he’s discovered various ways to control his flight. For direction and velocity, he nearly always relies on homemade, handheld propeller units, which are useful but limited by battery life. Will often partners with his brilliant, dedicated wife, Detective Andy Stewart, who’s now attending an FBI training program. Few others know of Will’s abilities, but one who does is FBI Special Agent Leslie Carson-Pelham, whose late boss told her the secret. She asks Will to eavesdrop on a right-wing White supremacist’s plans to mount an attack on the U.S. government and start a race war; instead, Will witnesses the man’s death by sniper fire. It’s just one in a string of hits on extremist targets, and although Will foils a would-be kidnapping and helps bring down a chief suspect, it’s soon clear that the killer is still on the loose, which causes general panic. On leave from the Academy, Andy consults with one of her instructors, Mrs. Palmer, who displays razor-sharp intelligence, a genius for invention, and world-class ballistics expertise. She has invaluable and surprising insights that suggest that the sniper’s next target will be the president of the United States, so she and the Stewarts converge on the president’s Detroit campaign rally. Along the way, multiple deceptions put Will and Andy in mortal danger—and could lead to a national political firestorm.
Any reader of this series knows that they’re in good hands with Seaborne, who’s a natural storyteller. His descriptions and dialogue are crisp, and his characters deftly sketched; for example, Pidge, an ace pilot whom Will trained, is described as “a little under five feet of coiled cobra with short blonde hair and a disarming pixie smile” whom Will “always assumed would die alone in a bar fight at the age of ninety.” The book keeps readers tied into its complex and exciting thriller plot with lucid and graceful exposition, laying out clues with cleverness and subtlety. In one instance, for example, Will is afloat, reconnoitering a scene; later on, an almost accidental observation he made before leads him directly to a crucial realization. It doesn’t feel contrived, and neither do some other surprising plot twists. Seaborne gives a pilot’s attention to the aerodynamics of Will’s self-powered flights, during which he must account for obstacles, such as power lines, while working out trajectories, and so on, which gives the book a satisfying procedural air. Also, although Will’s abilities are powerful, they have reasonable limitations, and the protagonist is always a relatable character with plenty of humanity and humor.
Another riveting, taut, and timely adventure with engaging characters and a great premise.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73568-349-2
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Trans World Data
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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