Catch Ian when you can.
A funny, brightly cynical look at a world of liars and poseurs.
Flying home to London, a man in business class introduces himself as Archie to his seatmate Darren. Darren’s luggage missed the flight and he’s low on cash. No matter. Archie makes a generous loan. But it does matter, because Darren gave Archie a bogus address and plans to skip off with the money. That’s okay, too, because Archie is going to purloin Darren’s luggage and his identity. Having hatched a complicated computer scheme that made him temporarily rich, Archie will use the alias to dodge the two men who proposed the caper in the first place. That happened when Archie was really Ian Gillick—Ian took the name of co-worker Archie to evade his co-conspirators after he ripped them off. The real Archie still works for the computer firm where this roundelay of doubles all began. Archie may be the only one here who knows what he’s all about. He collects and meticulously files his earwax, nose hairs, and boogers. As another character observes, Archie “was collecting himself.” British author McCabe (Stickleback, p. 170, etc.) gives everyone deeper reasons to run from themselves (or, in Archie’s case, look inward): the TV and movies they watch are insipid, academics are idiots, and the places people hide are vapid—Ian describes LA, where he’d sought cover, as “the Fame Pimp of the World.” Even when Ian and a lady friend get stoned so they can speak the truth, their observations are banal. Ian is fed up with being a parasite. Should he accept a dull job and just be himself? Darren is out there now as Archie, hoping to get back at Ian. Archie, indignant at the thefts of his identity, has teamed with the two thugs chasing Ian. What’s Ian to do?
Catch Ian when you can.Pub Date: July 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-552-99873-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Black Swan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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