Lacking the architectural skills to sustain an almost 500-page novel, Mercer takes a big step back into well-upholstered...
More is less in this overblown fourth round of murder and maiming for amnesiac Los Angeles TV correspondent Ariel Gold (Split Image, 1998, etc.).
A predawn phone call warns Ariel that her yoga teacher, Laya, has been blinded (permanently?) by maliciously tainted eyedrops, presumably to prevent her from identifying the two miscreants she saw beating a man to death in an alley shortly before. Back at her desk at TV newsmagazine Open File, after her initial struggle to get independent Laya to try psychotherapy and a cornea transplant, Ariel gets an even more disturbing message in a letter marked “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.” The writer, identifying herself only as Dorothy, worries about a mutual acquaintance who’s killed once and may kill again; she begs Ariel to call her. Obviously Ariel is supposed to know both Dorothy and the suspected murderer, but her amnesia makes unearthing any memory of them an intolerably extended exercise as she questions her wealthy grandfather and networks with his socialite friends, dividing her time between L.A. and the Bay Area. Ariel’s silky doggedness in pursuing every lead, no matter how unpromising or unfruitful, suggests a police procedural with the long-suffering police replaced by a well-connected celebrity newscaster who’s got resources. It’s an incongruous mix, made insufferable by the inconsequentiality of most of the chitchat. Mercer, who seems less interested in wrapping up either case than in continuing the process of unfolding her heroine’s family romance, pads the package as if she were being paid by the word, and both plotlines end up fizzling out in a shower of anticlimactic sparks.
Lacking the architectural skills to sustain an almost 500-page novel, Mercer takes a big step back into well-upholstered fluff that makes Mary Higgins Clark look like a master.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-671-03424-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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