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In George’s (Galya Popoff and the Dead Souls, 2012) murder mystery, two San Francisco homicide inspectors take a trip to Napa Valley’s wine country in search of a killer.Nothing spoils opening night at the opera house like a dead body in the men’s room. Fortunately, Inspector Renzo Dante is there to secure the crime scene, and it turns out that he knows the victim, Augusto Venturi, a family friend and successful winemaker. The murder is exceptionally brutal; the killer not only wrote the titular phrase on the ceiling in blood, but also pulled Augusto’s heart from his chest and, according to forensics expert Igor Tarakanoff, may have bitten into it. Renzo is convinced that he’ll find the murderer in Napa Valley, so he and his partner, Jackie Wong, move their investigation to Venturi Vineyards. It turns out that someone’s waiting for them there, and as the cops attempt to uncover the killer, they find themselves literally in the cross hairs. The novel opens strongly, contrasting the restroom’s stark white walls with the red blood spatter. It also quickly establishes its dry humor, sprinkling the serious crime-scene examination with comedy; Igor, for example, repeatedly cites “old Russian proverbs” in clipped English. Most of the novel is set in wine country, where the story maintains an earnest but breezy approach, although Igor regrettably appears only intermittently. The novel gains momentum with the introductions of famous Hollywood actress Cassandra Kelly, Renzo’s love from years ago who may be interested in rekindling their romance; and undocumented Mexican immigrant Maria and her young son, Salvador, who are desperate to reach Venturi Vineyards. Wine connoisseurs will be impressed with George’s doting descriptions of the grape (such as “a glass of opaque garnet-hued wine” or “heady aroma of cassis, caramel and spiced vanilla”). The author also provides context for uncommon terms, such as “fruit bombs” and “brix,” which will prove quite helpful for novices. The focus on the bucolic setting often sidelines the cops’ investigation, but vineyards do make great hiding places for a steely killer to lie in wait. Indeed, Napa Valley has never looked lovelier—or more terrifying.A mystery with a boisterous cast of characters and dazzling ambiance.
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NonePub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: KDP
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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