A credulity-straining thriller that could be a guilty pleasure for nondiscriminating genre fans.
A millennial worker at the Chicago Board of Trade is framed for murder in this conspiracy thriller.
Christian Roberts, 28, an aspiring broker, is working his way up the ladder as a phone clerk for a commodities firm. No sooner does he escape an inexplicable attempt on his life than he finds his billionaire boss and mentor murdered and himself the prime suspect. On the run, he fortuitously gets into a cab driven by a man whose son leads Strong and Associates, a covert squad of former members of the FBI, Secret Service, and the CIA. Think The A-Team crossed with Olivia Pope’s gladiators on the TV show Scandal. They’re “the best in the world,” says leader John Strong Jr., and they take Roberts into protective custody to solve the billionaire’s murder. The title of Force’s debut novel is woefully generic (it presumably refers to next year’s presidential race) for what’s essentially the origin story of how callow youth Roberts joins forces with Strong and Associates, setting the stage for a possible series. A sequel would benefit from a greater attention to detail. As a writer of thrillers, Force would do well to take his cue from Strong, who “never used five words when three would suffice.” The author subverts potentially potent action scenes, as when Roberts, fleeing for his life from the assassin, digresses to ruminate about the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life. Some readers may find two key players, clearly based on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to be laughable. Here, the first African-American president is blackmailed with a videotape of a gay sex orgy featuring himself (“the worst possible nightmare for any sitting president,” the author notes). Meanwhile, Abigail Mason, the secretary of state and likely presidential candidate, seems to embody every negative Hillary Clinton stereotype. The story has a climactic revelation, however, that gets points for its sheer shock value.
A credulity-straining thriller that could be a guilty pleasure for nondiscriminating genre fans.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-61-562976-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Lone Star Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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