Palpable, almost visible cross-cultural creepiness that never lets up: very smart thrills.
The host of a ghost-themed talk show finds himself inside the stories of his callers and sinking into memories of his own disastrous past in a first novel that moves with deserved confidence into Stephen King territory.
Artfully drawing on the raucous cultures of North America’s two most populous nations, Gout weaves time and viewpoints and his own spectral illustrations into a swift, sophisticated take on what may or may not be madness and may or may not be death. Two cars collide on a highway outside Houston. The survivors are teenaged boys, one from each of the vehicles. Gabriel and Joaquin, both from Anglo-Mexican families, bond with each other during their long recovery in the hospital, eventually pairing as Deathmuertoz, a rock duo that finds favor with Goths (among others). A terrible event in an abandoned Mexican radio station leaves the surviving Joaquin without a musical partner and with no ambition to rebuild. He stays in Mexico, where he drifts into broadcasting and evolves into the host of “Ghost Radio,” a nighttime call-in program on which people share their personal tales of the supernatural. When he takes up with Goth beauty Alondra, a serious student of comic books, she moves reluctantly into his professional life as the program’s resident voice of reason. Such a voice becomes ever more necessary as Joaquin becomes so susceptible that he finds himself actually slipping into some of the stories as they are told. The show becomes so popular that it moves to the United States, and Joaquin’s supernatural experiences begin to intrude off the air. It turns out that his dead partner Gabriel has news for Joaquin from the Other Side—none of it good.
Palpable, almost visible cross-cultural creepiness that never lets up: very smart thrills.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-124268-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
Although it’s as shallow as the grave an inconvenient body is buried in, this thriller does offer some nastily entertaining...
A marital thriller aspiring to the Gone Girl model offers some dark surprises.
Scott is a pen name for two collaborators, one a publishing professional, the other a screenwriter, and they seem to have done their homework. The book, already optioned for a TV series, is squarely aimed at a slot in the growing list of he-said, she-said mysteries. The novel focuses on spouses Paul and Rebecca, whose almost two-decade-long marriage flounders after his contracting business fails. She’s thriving as a pharmaceutical sales rep—a convenient job for a woman with Rebecca’s raging opioid addiction. They are not a likable pair. Both are inveterate liars, Paul about his adultery, Rebecca about her drug abuse. They swing wildly between intricate, amoral scheming and profound naiveté—at several points, the only thing more incredible than one character’s lies is that the other believes them so readily. Paul’s affair with an unhappy neighbor goes sideways about the same time Rebecca’s boss faces legal problems and the disappearance of his beautiful wife, whom Rebecca detests. Someone ends up dead, of course, and Paul and Rebecca must dispose of a body. But when a hidden corpse is found, it’s not the one they buried. The book has multiple first-person narrators and a plot that weaves strands through various timelines; through its middle portion it bogs down under the weight of all that but tightens up for a fast-paced final third that accelerates past some less than believable elements.
Although it’s as shallow as the grave an inconvenient body is buried in, this thriller does offer some nastily entertaining twists.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4452-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Consistent suspense stumbles only in the final confrontation. Seasoned, older crime-fighter Quincy is wooden, Connor...
Gardner debuts in hardcover with a cool and mostly accomplished psychokiller tale, again following the adventures of FBI agent Pierce Quincy and private-eye Lorraine “Rainie” Connor.
Having just set herself up as a p.i. in Portland, Oregon, former cop Connor is wondering how she'll pay her bills when Quincy knocks on her door. The pair shared previous adventures, and now Quincy wants to hire Connor to reinvestigate what seems to have been the accidental death of his daughter Amanda: a reformed alcoholic who supposedly fell off the wagon, ran over a pedestrian, and then drove her Ford Explorer into a tree in Virginia. But her father thinks the death may have been arranged. Just as Connor is uncovering some clues, Quincy's ex-wife Bethie meets a handsome stranger in Philadelphia and is horribly murdered. It doesn't take long for Quincy (whose unlisted phone number is mysteriously accessible to many of the felons he's locked up) to figure out that someone from his past is out to get him and his family. The action shifts to New York, where Quincy's other daughter, Kimberly, is studying criminology and seeing a psychiatrist to try to make sense of her sister's and mother's deaths. Quincy is almost paralyzed with guilt: his zealous attention to FBI duties ruined his marriage and might have caused Amanda’s alcoholism. He and Connor believe that the psychokiller, who is a master of disguise, adept at forgery, and unusually knowledgeable about FBI procedures (could it be a jealous fellow agent Quincy inadvertently humiliated long ago?), will go after Kimberly next. Then a phone call reveals that Quincy’s father has been kidnapped from his nursing home by someone masquerading as Quincy.
Consistent suspense stumbles only in the final confrontation. Seasoned, older crime-fighter Quincy is wooden, Connor delightfully brash and spunky.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-553-80238-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
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