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
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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