An unpredictable and surprising thriller.
Umhoefer’s debut novel blends elements of SF, mystery, and apocalyptic thrillers in a storytelling tour de force set largely in and around dairy farms in rural Elk Creek, Wisconsin.
After the crew of Skylab 4 noticed a massive circular structure in the snow-covered ground near Minneapolis in the winter of 1974, a few curious adventurers began researching the elusive geological phenomenon on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. Local teenager Paul Meadows and his friend Pete Flottmeier roamed the bluffs looking for the mysterious circle—that is, until Pete mysteriously went missing. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse geology professor Lawrence Marten, an expert on the area’s landscape, realized that the land had a secret that some residents of Elk Creek were willing to kill for. Later, in 2003, almost three decades after the mention of the circle on Skylab 4’s transcript, Jennifer von Guericke, a mission management team chair for NASA, comes back to her hometown of Elk Creek after she learns that her estranged mother has died. As she deals with the fact that “seven astronauts…died on her watch just ten weeks ago,” she investigates a grand-scale government conspiracy that dates to World War II, multiple possible murders, and a mythical portal to another universe. Meadows, now a mentally unstable middle-aged man who’s still obsessed with finding his friend, and Marten, now an 86-year-old retired professor, help von Guericke understand the unfathomably deep—and deadly—secrets of the area. Overall, the brilliance of this novel lies in the way in which the author draws out the mystery, leading readers along with a winding trail of breadcrumbs that slowly reveals the jaw-dropping truth. Solid character development and relentless pacing are among the novel’s obvious strengths, as is its focus on description, which makes the land of western Wisconsin come alive on the page, as when Jennifer’s elderly neighbor notes how “the scents of warm earth, wood fires, and even manure spread on fields were familiar.” It’s the sheer audaciousness of the story that powers this page-turning novel, which offers some bombshell plot twists.
An unpredictable and surprising thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798986672601
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Talus Books
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2023
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
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.
Travel writer Lo Blacklock is back. Ten years after the events of The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), she's attending the opening of a lavish Swiss hotel when, once again, a mystery intervenes.
A decade after she almost died on a luxury cruise and ended up exposing a murder plot, travel journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is trying to get back into the business post-Covid-19 and post–maternity leave. When she's invited to an exclusive hotel launch by the Leidmann Group on the shores of Switzerland’s gorgeous Lake Geneva, her supportive husband, Judah, insists that she should go, and her old boss, Rowan, says that if Lo can score an interview with the reclusive Marcus Leidmann, she’ll publish it in the Financial Times. Leaving Judah and the kids at home in New York, Lo is surprised by a last-minute upgrade to first class, which kicks off her trip in style. The hotel is appropriately awe-inspiring in both scenic location and effortless luxury, and Lo starts to put the memories of last trip’s trauma behind her, thinking that maybe she can just enjoy the experience this time. But then, at dinner, she's surprised to see at least three guests who were also on that original cruise, and when she finds a mysterious note in her room saying "Please come to suite 11 as soon as possible," she gets another shock. To quote William Faulkner, she realizes that “the past is never dead,” and soon Lo is careening across Europe on her way to England, only to find herself embroiled in another murder. The back half of the novel offers her the opportunity to continue her amateur sleuthing, and while she avoids much of the physical danger that plagued her on the cruise a decade ago, she is in very real legal trouble. This is the prolific Ware’s first sequel, and it's fun to spend time with Lo again, as she's both savvy and kindhearted. Unfortunately, the mystery is not as atmospheric and gripping as usual for Ware, though even a lesser Ruth Ware thriller is still worth reading.
An enjoyable visit with an old character, but not one of Ware’s strongest.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781668025628
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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