Awful people doing awful things in an awful place and time, plus talking ghosts and walking murals.
Two women with bad blood between them get out of jail during the pandemic and head for more trouble.
Pochoda has carved a place for herself in California noir—and her lockdown Los Angeles is about as noir as it gets, a hellscape overrun by homeless encampments, contagion, and violence. Florence “Florida” Baum and Diana Diosmary “Dios” Sandoval both receive early release from their sentences due to Covid-19. By jailhouse reputation, Florida is a party girl who got in too deep, Dios a ruthless force of nature (though her criminal career began when she was a scholarship student at a fancy New England college). Amid a riot during their incarceration, a woman who was cellmates with each of them at different times was murdered; their shared responsibility for the death has put them at odds. Florida wants nothing to do with Dios; Dios thinks they are bound for life. Shortly after both go on the run from their two-week quarantine, another murder is committed, and soon a female LAPD officer named Lobos is on their trail. The story is laid out in shifting perspectives, with much of the plot conveyed either in awkward dialogue, by a Greek chorus–type character back at the jail, or by clunky internal ruminations. “When do you become the thing you’ve kept at bay? When do you become the abused or the abuser?…When do you become the person for whom violence is easily within arm’s reach?" These questions are very personal to Officer Lobos as she is being stalked by her mentally ill husband, a subplot that is one very heavy cherry on top of this nasty sundae. Lobos is also in a debate with her police partner about just how violent women can be; Pochoda’s point seems to be there’s no limit. Neither Florida nor Dios feels much like a real person (thank God), and there’s little suspense as they move toward their dark outcome, which is immortalized in a mural described in the first pages of the book.
Awful people doing awful things in an awful place and time, plus talking ghosts and walking murals.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780374608484
Page Count: 288
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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 grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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