The guess is that we’ll be seeing more “Trouble” in the future, which is a good thing.
An ex-con who used to be one of Philadelphia’s toughest cops is swept up in a welter of murder, corruption, and double-dealing.
Toussaint Batiste doesn’t care much for being addressed by his nickname, “Troubleman,” or “Trouble” for short. But having just finished a stretch in prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while he was still with the Philadelphia PD, Toussaint can’t seem to be anywhere, not even in a car belonging to the son of a trusted friend, without trouble finding him. The car—or in street parlance, “whip”—belongs to Jay-Jay Wei, son of John Wei, owner of a successful restaurant in the city’s Chinatown district, who’s offering Toussaint a job and a place to live in gratitude for having saved him from a protection racket. Jay-Jay’s taking Toussaint to his parents’ house, but first he’s stopping to make a bag drop with some unsavory characters who, it turns out, will kill them both if Toussaint doesn’t take some quick and brutal defensive measures. It’s only the beginning of Toussaint’s harrowing reintroduction to the not-so-brotherly street life in the City of Brotherly Love. Before long, Jay-Jay is arrested for murder, his distraught father is contemplating taking matters into his own hands with his .22-caliber pistol, and Toussaint, who only wants to be left alone to make his own, preferably peaceable way back into society, now finds he must navigate by fair, foul, and mostly violent means through the city’s Black and Chinese underworlds while dealing with his one-time co-workers in the police department, including the sultry Sgt. Natasha Dobbs, who seems to hanker being more to him than an inside source. To say the least, there’s a whole lot of page-turning stuff packed in this latest thriller from K’wan, who in addition to an aptitude for orchestrating and propelling action sequences, displays a knack for colorfully droll dialogue and antic set pieces bordering on the surreal. He seems to be channeling Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, and Chester Himes in one rollicking stream.
The guess is that we’ll be seeing more “Trouble” in the future, which is a good thing.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780374394257
Page Count: 320
Publisher: AUWA/MCD
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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