A serviceable thriller with decent twists and a worthy protagonist.
Two FBI agents’ A-team status is put to the test when they take over the hunt for a serial killer in this novel.
Elizabeth Hanson gets results. That’s why she is her FBI boss’s “go-to agent for tough cases.” Hanson is sick of the arrangement, but her partner, Bob Parks, three years out of Quantico and 11 years her junior, loves it. He refers to their alliance as the A-team, “which was starting to be a bone of contention with the other agents.” Following an arrest in an identity theft case, Hanson is put in charge of the Metro Area Serial Killer probe. All of the victims were killed at home; all of the homes were broken into; and all of the women were raped and murdered in their bedrooms. Except one, and that break in the predator’s pattern throws the A-team off its game. Orlo (Rampage in Missoula, 2016) admirably avoids some of the clichés of the crime/procedural genre that plague a female protagonist. First, Hanson is a highly regarded agent and so readers are spared scenes where she is disrespected by sexist cops. “Neither Carlson nor I have any problem working…for you, Agent Hanson,” one officer tells her. “You know that. Remember the Gomez case a couple of years ago?” Second, while Hanson is devoted to her job at the expense of a romantic life, the case does not afford her the opportunity to find a new man in her life. Third, her relationship with Parks is a mutual admiration society: “He looked up to her”; “Hanson liked Parks…he took direction from her without question.” But sentences such as “Sammy was one of those rare people whom you only meet once in a great while” suffer from redundancy. Likewise, the crackerjack opening sentence—“Special Agent Elizabeth Hanson started pushing the wheelchair with her phony dad”—loses its punch as the author keeps repeating the phrase “phony dad.” Hanson is a skilled investigator and a strong character who warrants sharper prose. In addition, a late plot development seems arbitrary, as does the personal information theme.
A serviceable thriller with decent twists and a worthy protagonist.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5472-1779-3
Page Count: 244
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2017
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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