A crazy quilt of lies, schemes, and violence that makes for an addictive read.
In Gray’s thriller, a diabolical plot ensnares four people entangled in relationships in which secret agendas turn deadly.
Personal trainer Vaughn Innes, a likeable young loner with a reputation for being a Lothario, sits in a Boston bar contemplating his future. About to turn 30, he has just come out of one more failed romantic relationship. Vaughn has dreams: He hopes to open his own gym. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices an old flame, Lauren Harris, an attorney he dated four years earlier. Lauren spots him and sidles over, eager to renew their friendship. Three weeks later, she is Vaughn’s client at the trendy Fitness Hub. Lauren taunts Vaughn with a remark he made years ago when he claimed that he could seduce any woman (“‘I’m not judging. It’s like your superpower, right?’ She beamed back at him, enjoying his discomfort”). When Grace Ballard, a beautiful prospective client, enters the gym, Lauren bets Vaughn that he cannot bed her within three months. He is intrigued but hesitant. When Grace’s husband, heart surgeon Royce Titler, chases him down outside the gym and entices him to become the couple’s trainer, Vaughn agrees to take Lauren up on her bet. Vaughn’s ignorance of Lauren’s, Royce’s and Grace’s individual hidden motives propels this dark, slyly humorous, and twisty novel—and may cost him his life. Gray is a skillful storyteller—a surprise waits around every corner. The narrative effectively unwinds in chapters that alternate points of view to focus on events as experienced by each of these four characters (Royce’s tale is written as obsessive first-person entries in his secret journal). Readers may notice that occasional details about Royce’s and Grace’s backgrounds conflict; it is not until much later that these irregularities are revealed to be early clues about the extent of the characters’ deviousness. And just when readers think the puzzle is completed, the author delivers one final shocker.
A crazy quilt of lies, schemes, and violence that makes for an addictive read.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2024
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
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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