A reimagined America that is short on fresh ideas and long on misplaced humor.
In the alternative late-1950s America of Weiss' first novel, Commie-hater Joseph McCarthy is president, undesirables are being rounded up and deported, and it's open warfare on “individual[s] of Judaic Origins”—including LA police detective Morris Baker.
A Holocaust survivor of Czech origins, Baker is hooked on peach schnapps, has dingy sex with an aspiring actress, and suffers from recurring concentration camp nightmares. His life perks up when he's assigned to the celebrity double murder of rising TV journalist Walter Cronkite and forcibly retired film director John Huston. The investigation leads him to partner up with sexy Soviet spy Sophia Vikhrov, with whom he cutely uncovers a bomb plot involving imported German scientists, including Werner von Braun. For his troubles, Baker gets his front teeth knocked out by thugs from the House Un-American Activities Committee and, in a subsequent torture scene, has more teeth pulled (no subsequent signs of dental distress are evident). Edward R. Murrow makes a surprise appearance, Humphrey Bogart a decidedly un-Bogielike one, reduced to propagandist in films like It Came From Planet Communist! Fidel Castro and Che Guevera have been publicly executed. All the pieces for an edgy piece of speculative fiction are in place. But Weiss, no Philip Roth, falls into the trap of using collective trauma as a cheap backdrop for Baker’s shenanigans, and there’s something creepy about his treatment of Cronkite and Huston (whose film Beat the Devil inspired the book's title). In his acknowledgments, Weiss writes, “The story is, first and foremost, about Baker and his journey of adopting a new worldview.” Second and secondmost would have worked a lot better.
A reimagined America that is short on fresh ideas and long on misplaced humor.Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1944-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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