A yarn that has almost everything wrong with it, yet still reveals a compelling truth.
Curious blend of supernatural horror and conspiracy theory, from the veteran ghost-chaser (The Secret of Crickley Hall, 2006, etc.).
In his latest adventure, absinthe-swilling, deeply conflicted paranormal investigator David Ash tackles Comraich Castle in Scotland, an ancient, isolated pile whose sponsors, the Inner Court, comprise a secret organization of British royals and other superrich, shadowy movers and shakers. What’s going on at Comraich? Well, it turns out to be a sanctuary for war criminals, mass murderers, child molesters, insane dictators and others whose public presence might prove embarrassing or dangerous and who desire to vanish utterly (in some cases, involuntarily). Their sole common characteristic is that they are wealthy enough to afford the astronomical fees. Comraich’s problem, as Ash learns, is that an enormously powerful and hostile psychic presence has manifested itself in the dungeons where insane inmates are housed—so powerful, indeed, that it threatens to destroy the castle itself. Herbert pulls in a laundry list of real-life characters (used fictitiously, of course) who disappeared mysteriously or whose deaths gave rise to conspiracy theories (no Elvis, but there is the requisite Hitlerian connection). Tasteful, however, it isn’t. The book opens with the thoughts of a dying Princess Diana—her connection to Comraich isn’t revealed until near the end—and trundles rapidly downhill into mayhem punctuated with bouts of sex and swathes of irrelevant detail. Plot and dialogue often verge on the ludicrous. Readers end up in the peculiar position of knowing what’s to come and actually approving it: Yes, many of the people here are that unpleasant. Herbert clearly intended to channel public anger at the way the superrich insulate themselves from reality, and in this, he succeeds, especially given the recent revelations about how the British royals meddle in politics to their own benefit.
A yarn that has almost everything wrong with it, yet still reveals a compelling truth.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2896-0
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.
Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.
If you’re a little squeamish about worms, you’re really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: “His throat was just gone,” says the man who found the body. “Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something….” Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stage—and it doesn’t help Anderson’s world-weariness when the evil doesn’t stop once Terry’s in the ground. Natch, there’s a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King’s early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King’s concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he’s at his best, as always, when he’s painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: “June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack.” Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity’s head caves in “as if it had been made of papier-mâché rather than bone.” And then there are those worms. Yuck.
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8098-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Real events like the Vietnam draft and Stonewall uprising enter the characters' family history as well as a stunning plot...
The Owens sisters are back—not in their previous guise as elderly aunties casting spells in Hoffman’s occult romance Practical Magic (1995), but as fledgling witches in the New York City captured in Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids.
In that magical, mystical milieu, Franny and Bridget are joined by a new character: their foxy younger brother, Vincent, whose “unearthly” charm sends grown women in search of love potions. Heading into the summer of 1960, the three Owens siblings are ever more conscious of their family's quirkiness—and not just the incidents of levitation and gift for reading each other's thoughts while traipsing home to their parents' funky Manhattan town house. The instant Franny turns 17, they are all shipped off to spend the summer with their mother's aunt in Massachusetts. Isabelle Owens might enlist them for esoteric projects like making black soap or picking herbs to cure a neighbor's jealousy, but she at least offers respite from their fretful mother's strict rules against going shoeless, bringing home stray birds, wandering into Greenwich Village, or falling in love. In short order, the siblings meet a know-it-all Boston cousin, April, who brings them up to speed on the curse set in motion by their Salem-witch ancestor, Maria Owens. It spells certain death for males who attempt to woo an Owens woman. Naturally this knowledge does not deter the current generation from circumventing the rule—Bridget most passionately, Franny most rationally, and Vincent most recklessly (believing his gender may protect him). In time, the sisters ignore their mother's plea and move to Greenwich Village, setting up an apothecary, while their rock-star brother, who glimpsed his future in Isabelle’s nifty three-way mirror, breaks hearts like there's no tomorrow. No one's more confident or entertaining than Hoffman at putting across characters willing to tempt fate for true love.
Real events like the Vietnam draft and Stonewall uprising enter the characters' family history as well as a stunning plot twist—delivering everything fans of a much-loved book could hope for in a prequel.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3747-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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