A frequently intense kidnapping tale that takes full advantage of its confined setting.
A man locked in a cargo container has 24 hours to pay a huge ransom or he and his wife will die in this thriller.
Businessman Anthony Peterson awakens in a cargo container with no memory of how he got there. But why he’s there becomes quickly apparent. The only item in the otherwise bare container is a cellphone taped to the wall. The kidnapper calls and immediately makes it clear that he has Peterson’s wife, Susan. If the entrepreneur doesn’t come up with $10 million in 24 hours, the kidnapper (and others) will rape and murder Susan while leaving Peterson to die of suffocation. Peterson also has an extra incentive: His abductor has wired the container for electricity and intermittently punishes him with jolts. The phone has no GPS or internet capabilities, so he calls his closest business associate, Tom Pocase. Unfortunately, even after Pocase gathers all of Peterson’s company shares, the total is nowhere near $10 million. The protagonist looks for money wherever he can find it, including his grown but estranged children’s trust funds. As the narrative progresses, readers learn that Peterson is not without his faults, from a failed marriage to a deadly incident in South America for which some hold him accountable. With time running out, he can only hope that he and Pocase can track down the entire ransom amount and that then Peterson and Susan, as the kidnapper promised, will be free to go. Maçek’s (The Pretty Good and Pretty Representative Stories of J.C. Maçek III, 2017, etc.) story is a novelization of James Dylan’s 2018 film of the same name, which the author helped produce. Owing to its source, this book is rife with cinematic elements. For example, the majority of the action is from Peterson’s perspective (via phone), which Maçek often works to great effect. In one instance, Pocase, in securing money for the ransom, goes to Peterson’s house and has an unfriendly encounter with the family’s attack dog, Satan. It’s an assault the tale presents through a series of sounds: Pocase running, Satan’s jingling collar, and “the terrible sound of teeth on meat.” This furthermore mutes some of the violence, as Peterson (and readers) can only imagine what’s happening. But there is at least one cringe-inducing sequence: Peterson has the opportunity to lower the ransom—an act that involves a pair of pliers. The story occasionally shifts perspective to a character outside the container, like Calderon, a mercenary working for the kidnapper. Though Calderon’s subplot is engaging (he may no longer have the stomach for this type of profession), it does lessen the suspense derived from the claustrophobic container. Despite the restricted setting, the swiftly paced tale encumbers the protagonist with numerous problems, such as Pocase’s toying with the idea of keeping the ransom money. As he nonchalantly puts it, “I mean, theoretically I could just…hang up this phone and go on my merry way.” The identity of who’s behind the abductions is hardly surprising, but the open ending delivers an image that will definitely linger.
A frequently intense kidnapping tale that takes full advantage of its confined setting.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-912175-88-8
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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