by Junius Podrug ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2002
Readers’ heads may spin trying to follow the plots, counterplots, and back stories, but there’s little chance they’ll stop...
Another over-the-top but oddly effective adventure from Podrug (Presumed Guilty, 1997, etc.), this one sending a motley band back in time to stop two terrorists from killing Christ.
In Marseilles, prostitute Marie Gauthier is kidnapped by special agents and flown on Air Force One to a top-secret laboratory in New Mexico, where scientists are working on a “synchrotron” (a.k.a., time machine). Also hustled to the lab under duress are David Ben-Dor, an imprisoned Israeli engineer, and John Conway, a CIA operative turned actor. Why are they there? Because the Zayyad brothers, nominally Islamic fundamentalists but basically just homicidal maniacs with a grudge, recently shot their way into the lab and headed for the time of Christ, bringing at least one gun along and apparently aiming to bump off the Son of God. For convoluted and improbable reasons, Marie, David, John, and a young shepherd named Isaiah (accidentally plucked by the synchrotron from biblical times) are declared the perfect team to stop the Zayyads. Once back in a.d. 30, the group tries to blend into a landscape of unbelievable harshness, cruelty, and fanaticism. Not one to flinch on details or turn an eye away from the gruesome or sensuous, the author throws depraved Cleopatra-wannabe Salome into the mix, along with Zealots, Sicarii (fanatical assassins at war with the Romans and the Zealots), and an obese Roman slave trader specializing in debauchery. As ridiculous as it all is, Podrug somehow manages to take this kitchen-sink approach and make it work . . . most of the time. He delights almost as much in describing the hideous punishments meted out by Salome and the Romans as they apparently did in thinking them up, and the copious sexual material hovers between the salacious and juvenile.
Readers’ heads may spin trying to follow the plots, counterplots, and back stories, but there’s little chance they’ll stop reading before the whole bloody mess comes to an end.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-87514-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
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by Harold Robbins and Junius Podrug
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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