Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.
In this mystery set in 2002, a Manhattan lawyer joins his sheriff brother’s murder investigation in the siblings’ hometown.
Tom Morgan’s plans for a relaxing beach vacation change at the last minute. The attorney returns home to Coldwater, an upstate New York town, to help care for his recently injured mother. But on the day he arrives, a body surfaces in the community’s eponymous lake, which shares its shoreline with Quebec. As Tom’s family doesn’t want him on his phone all week, his younger brother, Joe, the town sheriff, suggests he occupy his time by helping solve the murder. The lawyer may have a further incentive as well—he knew the victim, Billy Pearce, the brother of Tom’s high school sweetheart, Susan. The Morgans quickly zero in on a local bio-research company where Susan works. The company is in the same building Billy supposedly broke into mere weeks ago. It’s not long before Tom reconnects with Susan as well as others from his past, including a thuggish man he scuffled with at a high school dance. After a mysterious illness shockingly sidelines Joe, Tom is on his own, no longer under the protection of his brother who carries a gun and has hefty muscles. It seems several people had a motive to want Billy dead, and almost as many were willing to make it happen. As Tom draws closer to unmasking a killer, he has run-ins with dangerous individuals who may put the attorney in the line of fire. Complicating matters further is the possibility that people in Coldwater harbor startling secrets—including Tom’s brother.
Ross fills his mystery with realistically flawed characters. For example, the Morgans’ mother, though she unquestionably loves her sons, mercilessly criticizes Tom—for being single, childless, and a workaholic as well as not visiting often enough. Setting this novel in the protagonist’s hometown gives the story a rock-solid foundation; though Billy had been a troubled man, Tom remembers him as the little boy who would “tag along” on his dates with Susan. At the same time, a gloomy history burdens Tom and Joe—their father also held the job of sheriff, and his life ended in a brutal homicide. Narrative tension gradually rises; along with his solo investigation, Tom has problems back at his law firm, as his link to a decade-old construction project may cost him his job. He’s moreover surrounded by deceitful people, most of whom seem quite capable of murder. This dodgy cast couples nicely with the moody ambience; as it’s October in a town just south of Canada, a perpetual chill affects everyone and renders Coldwater Lake a dark, icy crime scene. Fortunately, Tom’s dry wit offers welcome relief from the generally serious tone. His initial interrogations are hilariously blunt: “My little brother wants to know where you were on Saturday night.” Even after becoming a more skilled investigator, he’s still cheeky; responding to someone asking if he has an ID, Tom says: “None that would mean anything to you.” Though revealing the murderer involves copious theories and prolonged explanations, the story never lingers as it forges ahead to a gratifying conclusion.
Memorable characters drive an atmospheric thriller.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953789-54-9
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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