A dramatic but somewhat disjointed crime story.
Old secrets and obsessions plague three former friends in this debut thriller.
Ten years ago, in 2009, on the eve of their high school graduation, Delphine Quin, her friend Ariana Callum, and Delphine’s boyfriend, Ryan Martinez, witnessed a terrible crime. All three had arrived at Miami Prep from other places: Delphine from London, Ryan from New York, and Ariana from a trailer park in Florida before her mother married a wealthy man, who abused Ariana. The others’ back stories are also revealed: Ryan’s father is a powerful businessman with ties to unsavory characters, and Delphine’s mother committed suicide on her 18th birthday. They haven’t spoken to one another since the night of the mysterious crime, until Delphine runs into Ariana, whom she thought was dead, in a grocery store. Ariana takes Delphine to lunch and reveals that she has a photograph from that night that shows Ryan wearing a blood-spattered shirt at the scene of the incident—a photo she uses to extract money from Delphine. After the meeting, Delphine calls Ryan to her home in Miami to figure out what to do; they agree that Ariana is dangerous, but rather than address her clear and present danger, they instead begin an affair. Subsequently, Ryan tries to secretly sabotage Delphine’s husband’s career. Ariana loves Ryan, but he loves Delphine, and this love triangle provides the linchpin of the plot. Overall, this is a disturbing and theatrical tale. The nonlinear narrative bounces between the past and present and the three main characters’ first-person perspectives as the facts slowly come out. However, this same nonlinear structure has the effect of diffusing some of the suspense, because just as readers are learning a new detail about the incident in 2009, they’re yanked into an unrelated scene in 2019. The alternating points of view also reveal each character as an unreliable narrator, which means the truth is constantly elusive. Everything does finally come to a head in a violent manner in a climactic confrontation, though, where the truth is revealed.
A dramatic but somewhat disjointed crime story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5289-3115-1
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2023
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
