A fast-paced crime drama with engaging characters.
In Lansing’s thriller series starter, an ex-Army ranger infiltrates a white supremacist group.
Dakota Judd is six years into a seven-year sentence for a violent act committed against a commanding officer, and he’s about to get more time for almost killing a fellow inmate during a prison fight. Now Dakota has a price on his head and few options left, so he jumps at an unexpected offer from the FBI to go undercover in a white supremacist organization that may be plotting an insurrection; in return, the government will shorten Dakota’s sentence and wipe his record clean. With support from his tough but loving Aunt Billie, a former cop, and FBI agent Jean Steele, Dakota begins the dangerous task of infiltrating the Wolf Pack, a violent hate group; his mission soon leads him deeper into the inner workings of Blackfox, a highly organized and well-funded security outfit that has white nationalist ties. As he earns the trust of Blackfox’s leader, he becomes a key player on international missions with a team of specialists, all the while feeding intelligence back to the FBI. Meanwhile, Dakota must confront demons of his own past, including the man whose abuse of authority landed him in prison and who still commands the loyalty of dangerous men; at the same time, he must confront the growing threat to people he cares about. Lansing’s thriller is brisk and relentlessly suspenseful, and wastes no time; it effectively grabs readers’ attention from the very first page and doesn’t let go. The story also features a solid cast of characters, with the familial bond between Dakota and his Aunt Billie as a standout: “Aunt Billie could spin ideas like a Rubik’s Cube master and helped Dakota discover new solutions to youthful problems, and another important skill set, how to tie off a hook and rig a fishing pole.” Overall, readers will find this to be a gripping and highly readable tale of redemption, deception, and the high cost of going undercover.
A fast-paced crime drama with engaging characters.Pub Date: July 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798988516651
Page Count: 280
Publisher: White Street Press
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
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
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