A fast-paced, disturbing narrative in need of careful and substantial editing.
A killer on the loose in a small town struggles to outwit the one person who shares his demons.
The story opens with a gory sexual assault and murder committed by a man named Randy Custon, for reasons that are soon made clear in flashbacks to his childhood, when he and his brother, Eric, shared a strong yet strange bond. Even after the local police figure out that Randy is the killer, Eric tries to protect him, knowing just how damaged he is from the abuse they both suffered while growing up in one of their small town’s most comfortable homes. At one point, Randy thinks, “It’s my fault neither one of us is whole…I’ll make it right though. Once I’m done here I swear I’ll make it right.” Carlton’s novel requires several content warnings—for brutal physical violence, sexual assault, pedophilia, and long-term trauma, among other things. Readers will know the identity of the man who’s assaulting and murdering people early on; they’ll later learn why this man has such hellish impulses. The answer involves scenes so disturbing that any reader who’s ever experienced childhood trauma or physical/sexual abuse of any kind might want to pick up a different book. While the story moves quickly and the pacing is effectively varied, the editing is erratic; the text is marred by wildly uneven punctuation that often interferes with following the plot, in addition to font choices and line spacing that don’t follow consistent conventions. Carlton has made a surprisingly brave choice regarding the character who perpetrated the horrors upon Randy and Eric, but the extent of the depravity can hardly be fathomed, even with the lurid details provided in the backstory sections. One of the most curious decisions the author has made is to repeat, again and again, a common pejorative for a promiscuous woman, flinging it at a character in the course of conversations and private thoughts—one wonders if this is meant to indicate some kind of condition. The language feels a bit cheap and unearned, especially given the depth of the speaker’s cruelty.
A fast-paced, disturbing narrative in need of careful and substantial editing.Pub Date: April 22, 2012
ISBN: 9781440407994
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2026
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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