This crisp depiction of corporate avarice features tightly controlled action.
Shaw spins a thriller that gives big pharma a convincing, ugly bruising.
Various American regulatory agencies have come under close scrutiny of late, with serious questions raised about whether or not they’re in bed with the subjects they ought to be investigating. Shaw rides these suspicions with glee. In Life Expectancy, he trains his sights on the Food and Drug Administration, and the possibility of political chicanery guiding its agenda, rather than the health and well being of the citizenry. He builds the story slowly, comfortably serving forth players who weave their way into a layered tale where corporate greed, political malfeasance, personal ambition and ethical behavior vie for ascendancy. In this narrative, greed has soundly trumped any Hippocratic oath–medical research serves as a cash cow, not a miracle maker. On the table is a cure for ovarian cancer, and the FDA is squelching its development because it will render maintenance drugs obsolete, thus drawing the curtains on a lucrative industry that trades on peoples’ fears, hopes and bankrolls. The venality of the issue allows Shaw to paint especially ripe characters, with critically flawed heroes, bought-and-paid-for politicos and a bunch of bad guys typically “just over six feet tall, and boasting a full head of sandy blonde hair.” The rough, no-baloney sensibility of the protagonist befits the crude machinations of the drug company he is pitted against, though it also draws attention to the instances where Shaw gets lazy: “Ryan pondered the fickle nature of fate.” Elsewhere, the writing is plain egregious–“Jordan shot Ryan a glance full of innuendo and query.” Fortunately, Ryan is man enough for that broadside, a sympathetic individual with a clever bag of tricks to thwart evildoers. Also fortunate is that this story is not only timely, but smart, chromatic and tartly atmospheric.
This crisp depiction of corporate avarice features tightly controlled action.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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