An endlessly diverting crime story featuring a wide array of characters and subplots.
In Osterhage’s debut thriller, a crime lord’s murder energizes criminals and cops alike on both the California and Arizona sides of the Colorado River’s Parker Strip.
When mobster Jay Fallbrook dies from an arrow to the chest, La Paz County, Arizona, sheriff Jimmy Witchitaw takes the case. He has an immediate suspect, as the murder weapon bears the signature of the Sonoran Desert Mafia. But others may have wanted Fallbrook dead, including his right-hand man, Nick Sarvino, or Clarity Carlysle, whose grandfather, Catfish, the mobster was harassing. Witchitaw’s investigation hits a snag after he gruffly questions Sonoran Desert Mafia leader Charlie Red Crow, which spurs the FBI to send Agent Richard Canaveral to keep an eye on the sheriff. A series of additional murders, though, takes everyone by surprise. While there’s no mystery in this novel—readers know whodunit well before the sheriff does—the wonderful interplay of the various subplots is the true driver of the narrative. Clarity’s investigation into her grandfather’s puzzling monetary contributions, for example, leads her to Catfish’s reputed “assistant,” Nickelodeon, an exotic dancer at Fallbrook’s Bluewater Casino. Osterhage excels at making the various storylines fall into step: Chester Buckner, for instance, yearns for money to help his son, Ricky, wheelchair-bound from muscular dystrophy, and he gets dropped into the plot when he thinks that the casino might be a solution. Despite the author’s penchant for thoroughly detailed back stories, there are still a number of shocking turns. One character, for example, surprisingly turns out to be quite a proficient killer who swiftly ups the body count. Witchitaw may be the intended protagonist, but he’s overshadowed by other players, such as Milky Way, Nickelodeon’s uncompromising, envious girlfriend; and Canaveral, who stutters unless he loads himself up with Xanax. Clarity, meanwhile, is the book’s highlight; her investigation into Catfish’s wealth and new lady friend speeds by with more efficiency than Witchitaw’s. The story continually teases an inevitable confrontation before delivering a blistering coda.
An endlessly diverting crime story featuring a wide array of characters and subplots.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-2728-4
Page Count: 476
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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