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 best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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