A smart but uneven espionage tale.
A public affairs officer goes undercover to unravel the conspiracy behind a nuclear explosion that leveled Washington, D.C.
Shear (Near Miss, 2016, etc.) further immerses “accidental spy” Jackson Guild into the international intrigue behind the September 2009 attack that killed the U.S. president, most of Congress, and all of the Supreme Court justices, along with almost 60,000 citizens. It is now May 2010. Tricked by a former spy acquaintance, Elvin Krongartten, Guild is dispatched to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Under the pretext of writing a book, he is looking to get the goods on Edder Industries, “the most powerful management and engineering firm in America…a mom ’n’ pop shop…answerable to no stockholder,” which manages the nation’s entire nuclear weapons industry. Guild carries evidence that the Los Alamos lab whitewashed a report about the attack, and wants to find out who the “great and historic” Edder family is protecting. He is looking to hook up with malcontents he calls the Seven Dwarfs. He becomes involved with Dr. Alessandra Almont, his Snow White, “a modern-day Marie Curie” and Nobel Prize candidate who may have her own agenda. In addition, he freelances “a second parallel mission” to learn the truth about “a rumored fourth-generation nuclear weapon…no larger than a heavy Rubik’s Cube” and whose existence could threaten “to unhinge matters of war and peace.” Readers new to the series, of which this is the third entry, may struggle to get their bearings. The writing can be murky. For example, the first mention of the Seven Dwarfs refers to them as “possibles,” but possibles of what is not immediately clarified. In Edder Industries, Shear seems to be setting up a villain of Bondian proportions, but none surfaces. The Edders are only discussed. Some sentences are a bit wordy (“The name of the operation became for a time, the Seven Dwarfs, though it had nothing to do with the number seven or the Disney movie with those characters”). But the compact book is a quick read and Shear appears to know his scientific stuff. Tech-heads should relish lines like this one: “She repurposed the semiconductor substances used in computers to become the gatekeepers between two opposing mutually annihilating states of matter.” The ending is a doozy of a cliffhanger, suggesting a fourth book is in the offing.
A smart but uneven espionage tale.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 220
Publisher: BigWhitePaperPublishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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