Sure to unsettle readers who check their investments 10 times a day.
Fascinating, if uneven, debut thriller that links Wall Street treachery to international terrorism.
Credit debut author Conway, pseudonym for a hedge fund insider and an ad firm global strategy planner, for a premise that layers the threat of international terrorism onto the world’s considerable anxieties over a global economic collapse. It’s a double whammy that, as Conway lays it out, seems plausible. The notion is that far darker villains than Bernie Madoff may lurk about Wall Street, namely international terrorists who seek to bring the country down through financial disaster. A glimmer of what’s afoot first appears to Drew Havens, “a CUNY-educated nobody” crunching numbers for Citibank in Long Island City. Havens is spotted by Wall Street shark Rick Salvado, who admires Havens’ crack ability to spot stocks ripe for short selling (some readers may need a tutorial to follow the author’s complicated expositions on this topic). Following Havens’ canny insights, Salvado’s firm, Rising Fund, soars. Havens soon finds the work distasteful and wants out. About to bail, he’s alerted by Danny Weiss, a co-worker, that Rising Fund is involved is some peculiar, suspicious trades. Then Weiss is rubbed out, leaving behind several coded messages that Havens endeavors to decipher. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, another trader is taken out just as he, too, made a series of trades in computer stocks. That murder brings onto the scene Cara Sobieski, who, as part of the newly formed Terrorism and Financial Intelligence task force, suspects that some sort of Wall Street jihad approaches—a possibility Havens also suspects as he begins to understand Weiss’ cryptic jottings and as other murders of traders follow. Conway effectively links Havens’ and Sobieski’s personal lives to their careers, giving the characterizations texture. Divorced and racked by family tragedy, Havens seeks solace in statistics. After a series of failed relationships, Sobieski turns to promiscuous sex. Alas, their troubles play out in scenes that, hampered by clichés and stilted dialogue, often go thud.
Sure to unsettle readers who check their investments 10 times a day.Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95282-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
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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