A well-executed revenge drama in which every bad deed carries consequences.
A sexual thriller focuses on a well-liked man hiding a terrible secret.
This novel centers on fit, charismatic, middle-aged businessman Brad Wallace, a company owner, private pilot, grieving widower, and father of a grown son, Jared. Brad’s adjustment to single life has been rocky; he spends almost every evening at Kelsey’s Bar, silently lusting after the women he sees there. When an encounter with a prostitute goes humiliatingly wrong, Brad simmers with anger and hurt pride. He walks through the woods one night and sees a beautiful young woman standing naked on her deck. When she goes inside, he approaches the house for a closer look—and then enters, surprises the young woman (who faints), rapes her, and flees into the woods. For weeks, Brad lives with the horror of what he’s done and with the certainty that “any day there would be a knock at the door and, when he opened it, there would stand two or more police officers ready to read him his rights, slap on the cuffs and drag him off to Shamesville.” But the arrest never comes and he hears nothing about the incident in the news. Just when he’s beginning to breathe easier, he comes home one day to an overjoyed Jared wanting to introduce him to his new fiancee, Nicole Thomas—and Brad is astonished to see the same young woman he raped, who’s happy to meet him. Brad’s guilt and doubts only increase when Jared and Nicole take up living in his house and his son’s new job often sends him out of town. Grodt (Nick Sinclair, PI, 2014, etc.) handles this admittedly manipulative setup with smooth precision. The author increases the biting irony every time Nicole, who claims to remember nothing about her attacker, confides in Brad about how her rape “ruined” her, and how Jared must never know about it. The tense novel manages to be unfailingly gripping without ever trying to enlist the reader’s sympathy for Brad—and without ever allowing the reader to feel quite at ease with Nicole. The book’s well-orchestrated climactic chapters are expertly done and should surprise readers right to the end.
A well-executed revenge drama in which every bad deed carries consequences.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1086-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 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
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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