A psychological novel that takes readers inside the mind of a serial killer.
Helford’s debut opens with a seemingly innocuous scene: A real estate agent shows a young couple a house they’re considering buying. Suddenly, the wife imagines horrific scenes of bloodshed in the house and begins screaming. Unbeknownst to the real estate agent, the house has a dark history: It was once home to a serial killer. The author then opens the narrative up, bringing readers into the mind of that killer, John, a nervous, punctilious man preparing to go “shopping”—not for groceries but for victims he calls “epiphanies.” Helford explores the weird logic of John’s psyche in a series of carefully controlled chapters enlivened by baroque, engaging prose (“A dark calm void filled the confusion, filled the sadness, filled John to the brim, while pushing aside his chaotic thoughts to the edges of the darkness, and John followed”). On the outside, John is calm, collected and sometimes even sarcastic; he smiles as he tells one prospective victim, “You know that in some tribal cultures, a smile is actually a warning of incipient violence.” But on the inside, he’s tortured by grotesque visions that drive him to kidnap women and savagely murder them. This internal narrative is so vivid and disjointed that readers will likely find John both fascinating and repulsive as he stews with “impotent rage at the wrong done to him” yet experiences neither remorse nor compassion. As the pace increases, the focus splits between John and a team of police investigators trying to capitalize on his few mistakes in order to catch him. The technical, procedural aspects of these sections are just as well-written and convincing as John’s surreal, violent inner monologues. The book significantly increases the gore and violence in its second half, as John’s inner demons urge him to greater violence (and seem to take on lives of their own). Fans of Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs and Shane Stevens’ By Reason of Insanity may find a new favorite author here.
A violent, disturbing thriller.Pub Date: July 29, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
56
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Named for an imperfectly worded fortune cookie, Hoover's (It Ends with Us, 2016, etc.) latest compares a woman’s relationship with her husband before and after she finds out she’s infertile.
Quinn meets her future husband, Graham, in front of her soon-to-be-ex-fiance’s apartment, where Graham is about to confront him for having an affair with his girlfriend. A few years later, they are happily married but struggling to conceive. The “then and now” format—with alternating chapters moving back and forth in time—allows a hopeful romance to blossom within a dark but relatable dilemma. Back then, Quinn’s bad breakup leads her to the love of her life. In the now, she’s exhausted a laundry list of fertility options, from IVF treatments to adoption, and the silver lining is harder to find. Quinn’s bad relationship with her wealthy mother also prevents her from asking for more money to throw at the problem. But just when Quinn’s narrative starts to sound like she’s writing a long Facebook rant about her struggles, she reveals the larger issue: Ever since she and Graham have been trying to have a baby, intimacy has become a chore, and she doesn’t know how to tell him. Instead, she hopes the contents of a mystery box she’s kept since their wedding day will help her decide their fate. With a few well-timed silences, Hoover turns the fairly common problem of infertility into the more universal problem of poor communication. Graham and Quinn may or may not become parents, but if they don’t talk about their feelings, they won’t remain a couple, either.
Finding positivity in negative pregnancy-test results, this depiction of a marriage in crisis is nearly perfect.Pub Date: July 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7159-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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