This little ditty about Jack and Diane is a fast-paced read that finds a few new wrinkles in a familiar genre.
“How hard could it be to steal from a bunch of potheads?” Thief Jack Apple finds out when he enters into a suspicious partnership to rob a medical marijuana dispensary in Cooper’s (How to Steal a Truck Full of Nickels, 2015) novel.
One of the most irresistible crime-fiction tropes is the criminal who wants to go straight but gets drawn in for one last score. But the sooner Jack puts his criminal life behind him, the better; even he has doubts that he’s “the master thief he once thought he was” due to a botched heist that opens the book. In it, he attempts to rob a home in which the resident, his violent goons, and some vicious dogs are present. On this fateful night, he also meets Diane Thomas, a 20-something femme fatale with an intriguing proposition. She wants him to help her rob a medical marijuana dispensary for a six-figure payoff; she stole the idea from her estranged husband. Jack puts up token resistance, but Diane is nothing if not persuasive. Before readers can say Dog Day Afternoon, the heist goes awry and a hostage situation ensues. Soon, Jack is dealing with a tough-talking sheriff facing re-election, a restless mob, activists eager to exploit the explosive situation, and competing TV news anchors with their own agendas. By the time the dispensary owner tells Jack, “You have no idea what a lousy idea this is, do you?” it’s too late. Overall, Cooper gives Jack some of the best lines in this brisk book (“Robbery is easy. Getting away with it is the hard part”), but Diane, who’s painted as a trigger-happy and not entirely trustworthy character (“I wasn’t lying. I just wasn’t telling you everything”), gives as good as she gets. Less convincing are the news media and hostages, who are more broadly and unconvincingly drawn. There’s a nifty, sequel-ready climax, although the novel’s epilogue, which ties up some of the less engaging plot threads, takes some of the wind out of the story’s sails.
This little ditty about Jack and Diane is a fast-paced read that finds a few new wrinkles in a familiar genre.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 249
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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