Everything and everybody is larger than life yet somehow smaller than life as well.
The latest stand-alone from the chronicler of Eve Duncan and her remarkable family tells the story of an equally remarkable bunch of freelance law enforcers arrayed against a nefarious mercenary.
Jorge Masenak has outdone himself with his latest coup: Stealing a dozen racehorses lodged at Morocco’s St. Eldon’s Academy, kidnapping 59 students from the girls school, passing them around to his confederates, and threatening to execute them if any government agency makes a move against him. Cue the entrance of rogue CIA agent Alisa Flynn, who promptly persuades tech mogul Gabe Korgan to help her rescue the girls. Alisa is particularly close to Sasha Nalano, her official ward, who’s a wizard with horses, and Sasha is especially close to Chaos, an ill-tempered stallion with preternatural speed—so close that girl and horse communicate telepathically. Enlisting soldier of fortune John Gilroy to help with logistics, Alisa and Korgan quickly devise a plan to rescue the hostages. But Masenak escapes, taking Sasha and Chaos, whom he’s determined to have Sasha train on a dramatically accelerated schedule so he can be raced one-on-one against Nightshade, the Triple Crown winner owned by ruthless lumber baron Marcus Reardon. Instead of sweating the details of plotting or characterization, Johansen sets this modern swashbuckler in an alternative reality in which the heroes can infiltrate the villain’s armored strongholds at will, characters compare each other to Wonder Woman and Indiana Jones, and the software has powers as superhuman as the people who develop and use it in the field.
Everything and everybody is larger than life yet somehow smaller than life as well.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1313-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.
Against her better judgment, Lucy Chase returns to her hometown of Plumpton, Texas, for her grandmother’s birthday, knowing full well that almost everyone in town still believes she murdered her best friend five years ago, when they were in their early 20s.
Coincidentally—or is it?—Ben Owens, a true-crime podcaster, is also in town, interviewing Lucy’s family and former friends about the murder of Savannah Harper, “just the sweetest girl you ever met,” who died from several violent blows to the head. Lucy was found hours later covered in blood, with no memory of what happened. She was—and is—a woman with secrets, which has not endeared her to the people of Plumpton; their narrative is that she was always violent, secretive, difficult. But Ben wants to tell Lucy’s story; attractive and relentless, he uncovers new evidence and coaxes new interviews, and people slowly begin to question whether Lucy is truly guilty. Lucy, meanwhile, lets down her guard, and as she and Ben draw closer together, she has to finally face the truth of her past and unmask the murderer of her complicated, gorgeous, protective friend. Most of the novel is told from Lucy’s point of view, which allows for a natural unspooling of the layers of her life and her story. She’s strong, she’s prickly, and we gradually begin to understand just how wronged she has been. The story is a striking commentary on the insular and harmful nature of small-town prejudice and how women who don’t fit a certain mold are often considered outliers, if not straight-up villains. Tintera is smart to capitalize on how the true-crime podcast boom informs and infuses the current fictional thriller scene; she’s also effective at writing action that transcends the podcast structure.
Smart, edgy, and entertaining as heck.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250880314
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this.
Florida’s preeminent satirist returns to the fray with a worm’s-eye view of MAGA World.
In his time off from packaging Dream Booty sex dolls for Bottom Drawer Novelties, Dale Figgo does his patriotic best to save the nation by hurling plastic bags weighted with sand and filled with antisemitic epithets onto the lawns of gated communities. The disapproving tenant in his extra bedroom, Viva Morales, works as "wealth director" for the Mink Foundation, a nothingburger position that would bother her a lot more if she knew the fate of Rachel Cohen, the predecessor who uncovered some secret details that cofounders Claude and Electra Mink wanted to keep secret. Congressional Representative Clure Boyette, in the middle of what should be an easy reelection campaign and a much tougher divorce from his wife, Nicki, who’s collected abundant evidence of his infidelities, wants the Minks to fund Wee Hammers, which is just like Habitat for Humanity except that the habitats are built by child labor. Figgo and his best friend, white supremacist Jonas Onus, have a serious falling out over the demand by Clure’s father, kingmaker Clay Boyette, that Figgo accept Onus as an equal partner in Strokers for Liberty, the organization of lunatic activists he’s founded, and a calamitous demonstration at a gay bar in Key West. It all sounds so busy, dizzy, and fizzy that it makes perfect sense when Janice Eileen Smith, who in her role as Galaxy is Clure’s mistress in every sense of the word, breaks away from him, bonds with Viva, and starts her own counterplot, just like every other member of the cast.
The perfect antidote for anyone who doomscrolls daily headlines: more crazed, rollicking, sharply written sendups like this.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780593320945
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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