One man’s compellingly complicated life drives this engrossing, subdued thriller.
In Tassopulos’ debut novel, a screenwriter with close ties to a recent double homicide quietly digs into the case on his own.
It’s the fall of 1993, and Nicholas Kappas now has two produced screenplays, including one for a movie about to be released. Then, the director and the star of Nicholas’ other movie, which is still in the editing stage, are found dead from gunshots. Nicholas was close to both victims—he was a friend of Tom Mather, who hadn’t directed a movie in 15 years, and in a relationship with actress Samantha Farr. Initially, Nicholas, with help from newspaper columnist Katharine Reardon (who’d been living with Tom), devotes himself to convincing investors to “stick with it” while they complete postproduction on the film. But he soon turns his focus to bringing the killer to justice; he furtively questions family, friends, and old flames to gather details, as he’s certain the police don’t have enough evidence to put the murderer behind bars. The author skillfully shepherds readers through the decades (from the 1970s to the mid-1990s) as Nicholas witnesses his script frustratingly change on its way to the big screen and, decades earlier, Tom finds inspiration for his debut movie. While the murder stirs up mystery and a touch of suspense, the story’s best aspects are Nicholas’s labyrinthine relationships—he’s still connected to several women he’s been involved with throughout the years. All the while, the author weaves in references to movies, music, and current events befitting their respective decades (the O.J. Simpson case and trial monopolizes the mid-’90s news). Tassopulos’ easygoing prose aptly suits Nicholas’ narration as the protagonist struggles with romance, his professional career, and investigating a tragic crime that may not yield a definitive answer.
One man’s compellingly complicated life drives this engrossing, subdued thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2025
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
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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