by J.A. Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
Hearty backstories and a beguiling Louisiana setting enhance this compelling thriller.
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In Adams’ 1980-set thriller, a U.S. Air Force major is determined to prove that his estranged father was murdered.
When Maj. Harvey “H” Doucet gets word that his father, Harvey Sr., is dead, he requests emergency leave and heads from North Carolina to Louisiana. His father’s successful company, Doucet Drilling, is already dealing with another recent tragedy: An oil rig drilled directly into a salt mine, killing numerous workers. Sapphire Salt filed suit against Doucet Drilling and Calco Oil, and each of the latter businesses blamed the other for the flawed map that precipitated the accident. It initially appears as if it was all too much for Harvey Sr., whose death was ruled a suicide. H and Harvey Sr. didn’t get along—H’s spoiled younger brother, Victor, was his father’s favorite—but H refuses to believe that his dad would ever kill himself. With the help of Harvey Sr.’s loyal bodyguard, Placide, he starts a personal investigation into his father’s demise. It soon becomes clear that someone doesn’t want H asking too many questions; H spots a car following him, which then tries to run him off the road. Later, he and Placide witness an explosion that was clearly meant to kill them. Their search for answers takes them to Memphis, Tennessee, where they unearth evidence of possible fraud. Before long, even H’s beloved Aunt Ethel and Uncle Louis are under threat, and another suspicious suicide only confirms that H and Placide are on the right track. Adams’ novel begins with a bang as a Louisiana man, Auguste Savois, goes fishing with his 8-year-old grandson, and a sudden current nearly pulls their riverboat into an apparent whirlpool. This is followed by equally tense, memorable scenes inside the salt mine and aboard the oil rig. From there, Adams opts for a more leisurely pace, as H’s investigation involves interviewing myriad characters. Nevertheless, the protagonist’s family history is thoroughly engaging. Harvey Sr., for example, was so distraught by his wife’s death years ago that he focused on his company instead of his two young sons, whom Ethel and Louis raised, instead. This helps to make H’s aunt and uncle even more endearing—and makes them prime targets for the bad guys. Victor, who’s certain that he’ll inherit Doucet Drilling, generates some melodrama along the way. The author’s frequent descriptions of Louisiana reveal a clear fondness for narrator H’s home state; as H muses, “The sky was a clear, crisp blue, as oil field industry trucks and tankers roared by us on Highway 90. The rare kind of late fall day in Louisiana when the humidity drops so low that the sky is lapis lazuli, and everything looks like it’s just been scrubbed.” The story’s steady momentum gradually accelerates, and H and Placide, a former security guard who got his job after saving Harvey Sr.’s life, ultimately arm themselves. The expected gunfight doesn’t disappoint, and a subsequent wrap-up, though lengthy, delivers a worthy denouement.
Hearty backstories and a beguiling Louisiana setting enhance this compelling thriller.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 258
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.A. Adams
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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by Max Brooks
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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