A hard-to-follow thriller with an intriguing mathcentric storyline.
After a woman witnesses the murder of her good friend, she travels to Switzerland to find his missing daughter in this debut thriller.
Mallory Lowe, a math professor at the University of Colorado, meets her old friend and graduate adviser, Tom Haley, at the top of Angel’s Landing in Utah’s Zion National Park. Mallory met Tom nearly 20 years ago while she was working on her doctorate in mathematics at the University of Oklahoma, and after Tom’s wife passed away, Mallory and his adopted daughter, Katie, grew close. Tom and Katie’s relationship has suffered since his wife’s death, however, and recently, she hasn’t been responding to his calls. “Something’s wrong, I just know it,” he tells Mallory. “It’s my fault….She’ll be killed if the dam is blown up.” But before she can ask more questions and make sense of Tom’s ramblings, a helicopter descends and a man with a rifle pushes Tom to his death. Mallory makes it her mission to find and protect the 28-year-old Katie, who was in Switzerland after a stint in the Peace Corps, and find out more about the dam that Tom mentioned. After arriving in Switzerland, she becomes acquainted with Möbius, a large, corrupt, multinational corporation invested in private water utilities that may have something to do with the aforementioned dam. Lindauer creates an engaging narrative that integrates mathematics. For example, when Mallory first climbs the mountain, she repeats to herself, “arc length…curvature…tangential angle…arc length”; later, a series of mathematical symbols may contain the key to the mystery. In one scene, when asked why math fascinates her, Mallory responds with a simple explanation: it’s “the language of the universe.” Unfortunately, however, the suspenseful moments lack enough context to bring them to life; the characters’ surroundings are rarely described in detail, leaving too much to the readers’ imaginations. In addition, the omniscient third-person narration sometimes jarringly switches to Mallory’s thoughts without attribution: “She caught herself. Was she all of a sudden letting her guard down?...They had her in their sights three times. Don’t be a fool.”
A hard-to-follow thriller with an intriguing mathcentric storyline.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Story Merchant Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2018
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
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
