An exciting, financially savvy story of Wall Street malfeasance and murder.
A murder mystery set against the backdrop of the impending financial crisis of 2008.
Dr. Joshua “JD” Dionne receives an anxious call from the wife of one of his closest friends—Dr. Richard Bridger—who seems to have gone missing. When Dionne checks Bridger’s hotel room, he finds a blood-soaked scene with signs of a struggle and a severed finger he’s sure came from Richard’s hand. The list of suspects is long. Richard’s wife, Dot, was exasperated by his chronic infidelity and had financial motives to kill him. Every husband whose wife slept with Richard has to be considered as well. Additionally, Richard had busted a former student—John Maynard Carter—for plagiarism and then alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission that he might be involved in financial fraud. Dionne has a background in forensic accounting and participates in the investigation led by Detective Antonio Puccini, a Columbo aficionado. But the complications don’t end there. Dionne’s friend Fareed gets entangled in a contretemps with an artist who has ties to Carter as well as Carter’s friend Harriman, who also seems knee-deep in nefarious financial activity. Fareed’s life is threatened over the dispute (and his dog is murdered), and Dionne is nearly offed after he discovers Harriman is running a complex Ponzi scheme. Thrown into the mix is the possibility of a maniacal serial killer with plans to make Dionne his next victim. In his first novel, Pill creates a tangled skein of clues, a tantalizing feast for the reader hungry for investigative intricacy. Also, the author smartly weaves in the 2008 banking debacle, which serves as the motivation for considerable wrongdoing. And while the plot can be frustratingly dense, Pill repeatedly offers readers helpful synopses, sometimes delivered in bullet notes. The dialogue can be melodramatically rendered, however. Consider Dionne’s wife’s reaction to an attempt on his life: “JD, what in Hades is happening to us? A week ago our biggest problem was Lehman Brothers’ stock price, and maybe Junior’s curfew, and now we’re thinking about armed guards for our house.” Overall, Pill’s creation is both intelligently fashioned and genuinely immersive, ideal for fans of crime fiction.
An exciting, financially savvy story of Wall Street malfeasance and murder.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 694
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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