A nuanced techno-thriller with both brains and brawn.
In Klingler’s debut thriller, a female sniper tracks down a bomber who targets U.S. military interests.
A motorcyclist leaves Alaska’s Caribou Motel at dawn. Using the name Arthur Tresuniak, the man drives at top speed toward the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Once within range, he begins tossing metallic, rod-shaped devices along the pipeline’s structure. The dozens of devices, equipped with tire treads, antennae and explosives, are called Rats. Arthur detonates them after racing away. The resulting disaster (which, from above, resembles a “Firesnake”) causes the stock of major oil companies to plummet and U.S. President Mallor to panic over his chances at re-election. Enter Gen. Billy Williams and his sharpshooting love, Col. Claire Ferreti. They visit Alaska to investigate just who or what is behind the pipeline sabotage. There, they meet 12-year-old Billy Norton, an imaginative kid who happens to have found an undetonated Rat. After Williams has specialists study the device, he learns that the Alaskan bomber’s profile matches that of the Demon—a shadowy operative known only by the faintest digital trail. Tracing the Demon to the Chinese-Vietnamese border, Williams decides to send Claire after him. Klingler’s debut offers a deep logistical jungle sure to entertain buffs and newcomers to the techno-thriller genre. Throughout, he displays fierce writing chops: He describes the pipeline as “a scar from a knife fight Alaska lost.” Short chapters balance action and subterfuge with political thought targeted keenly at modern drone warfare. Petry, a man running for president against Mallor, tells his audience to strive for “A world where robots are producing, not destroying, our way of life.” A subplot follows the fate of young Billy, who, after seeing a Rat detonate, is silenced by trauma; the theme of children suffering the worst during wartime—and long after—propels the rest of the plot into suitably daring territory.
A nuanced techno-thriller with both brains and brawn.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1941156025
Page Count: 454
Publisher: Cartosi LLC
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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