A well-crafted, diverting thriller.
A DEA desk agent is forced into the field in Karl’s thriller.
In the mid-1980s, during President Reagan’s War on Drugs, Thomas Sebastian works as a researcher at the Drug Enforcement Administration. The role means a lot to him (his brother dies of an overdose), but he has no combat or field experience—the only thing close is a stint he served in the Peace Corps, in Thailand. It turns out that his Thai language abilities are just what the DEA needs for a drug bust in Bangkok. Thomas goes through a hellish few weeks of combat training and assumes a new identity: Robert Jordan. “Robert” travels to Bangkok and meets his new team, which includes a Thai agent and ex-detective, an American woman who’s a remarkably fierce combatant, and their overseer, who keeps spirits up. Their jobs are complicated, requiring them to avoid angering the local police as well as the city’s drug cartels as they snoop around and break into potential drug sites (Robert must act as if can’t speak Thai). Soon, Robert encounters violence he knows he’s not cut out for and meets an alluring woman at a local cafe who may or may not be an informant (“He breathed in her perfume—jasmine”). It’s difficult to negotiate everyone’s competing interests, and Robert finds himself in way over his head. The story is fairly straightforward, buoyed by political discussions and humor, and the characters are funny and easy to root for. There’s an odd lack of suspense and danger, though—the actual destructive effects of the drug trafficking aren’t seen much on the page, and they aren’t often used to further the plot, beyond justifying backstories. A tense shoot-out happens near the end of the novel, but it doesn’t land as well as it should because the stakes don’t feel high enough to justify the impact the scene seems to intend. Additionally, some of the characters (particularly those who are Thai, female, or both) are predictable and stereotypical. Still, this is a competent, enjoyable thriller with some substance, and spy novel fans will likely enjoy it—particularly those with an interest in the 1980s and Thailand.
A well-crafted, diverting thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9798987014172
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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