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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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