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
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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
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