An entertaining, tense thriller with die-hard heroes.
In this supernatural thriller set in the 1980s, an American vampire is studying abroad when his trip takes a perilous turn.
Samuel Johnson is a vampire who plans to leave Knox College in Illinois to study Russian language and culture in the Soviet Union. At the Gogol Institute of Russian Language in Moscow, he befriends Kathy, a fellow bloodsucker. Samuel’s parents are part of an organization called Vampires Against the Evil, which aims to protect humans from vampires. Samuel, who’s also part of this organization and mission, soon finds that his trip to the USSR will take him far from the classroom. He meets Vladimir Bobrinsky, the Director of Special Foreign Students, and Edward Sutton, vampire leader of the American College Teachers of Russia. He and Kathy help deliver fortified blood to an ailing vampire leader who could help mend the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. Also, strangely, they are asked to spy on their fellow students at the Gogol Institute and report suspicious activities. But Samuel’s dabbling in espionage may complicate the relationship between the CIA and KGB. To add to his and Kathy’s woes, there are Russian criminals who don’t appreciate the young vamps’ meddling. At first, Samuel assumes they are random delinquents but, it turns out, they’re a part of a much larger threat to human- and vampire-kind. Carpenter has crafted an excellent paranormal thriller with multiple twists and a standout cast. Samuel is a likable, relatable lead, and Kathy is equally interesting (she can repair injuries by turning into mist and back into a vampire). Vicious foes add to the fun: “Still vamped out, Maksim launched toward me. This time he wasn’t attempting to grab me but to slash me with his claws. As he flashed by me, his claws raked my chest, sides, and back.” Another great addition to the Samuel Johnson series.
An entertaining, tense thriller with die-hard heroes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798393047115
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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