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KILL FOR LOVE

Neatly flips the formula of the male serial killer on its bashed-in head.

A Los Angeles sorority girl finds fulfillment as a serial killer in Picklesimer’s bloody, satiric debut.

Bored with manicures and the attentions of boorish young men, and trying not to think about the pleasures of a juicy In-N-Out burger, increasingly psychopathic narrator Tiffany realizes that the only thing she really wants to do when a date takes her home is to stab him with a knife she finds conveniently left on a cutting board. That and consume a Pabst and a leftover chicken leg. The satisfaction this gives her leads to more slaughter, involving both guys she can rationalize deserve the punishment and those who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. While she’s temporarily satisfied with a budding relationship with an older, richer suitor, he soon proves to be disappointingly human and less than totally addicted to her: When she looks through the windows of his house when he’s supposedly on a business trip and catches him watching TV and eating junk food, the romance takes a turn for the worse. Perhaps because Tiffany is too narcissistic to see anyone else as fully human, the other characters come across as more cartoonish than three-dimensional. These include the lawyer trying to maintain plausible deniability about Tiffany’s actions, the sweet roommate who may just be following in Tiffany's footsteps, the sorority “goody-goody” who is always insisting that Tiffany obey the rules, and the male psychopath who might give Tiffany a run for her money. Although the novel sometimes seems more outline for a screenplay than fully articulated work of fiction, and while it definitely isn't for the squeamish, it cunningly draws its premise out to its logical extreme and finds a convenient target in LA’s fitness and wellness culture.

Neatly flips the formula of the male serial killer on its bashed-in head.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023

ISBN: 9781951213893

Page Count: 285

Publisher: Unnamed Press

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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