A conventional thriller elevated by the author’s masterly juggling of characters and subplots.
The U.S. struggles to fight a pandemic—with viral outbreaks in three major cities—while agencies search for the mastermind behind the biological assault in this sequel.
The call to the FBI about a potential attack unfortunately has merit. A canister in a New York City subway station released an airborne mutated H5N1 virus that spreads quickly. FBI partners (and currently lovers) Georgiana “George” Reed and Mark Strickland are on the case, but their prime suspect, biochemist Dr. Suzy Chen, may already be dead. Someone fired a bullet into her head, likely an assassin for “the Organization,” referenced in a cryptic note Suzy left behind. An attempt to kill her boyfriend, Army intelligence officer Col. Max Graham, however, fails. George and Mark turn to Max for answers regarding Suzy, including the possibility that Dr. Eric Adams, director of the lab where the two were employed, is an accomplice. The Organization’s enigmatic Director, meanwhile, learning that Max is still breathing, sees the colonel as a loose end, because Suzy could have told him anything. Finding the person behind the terrorist strike entails tracing a bank account (also from Suzy’s note) as well as the biochemist’s probable motive. The Director promised to get Suzy’s separated-at-birth twin sister, Lee, a prostitute, out of Hong Kong. While a Manhattan hospital deals with an influx of infected patients, there are also significant outbreaks in Miami and Chicago. The CDC’s working on a vaccine, but it could take months—time the American people don’t have. Wells’ (Dead Love, 2013) latest novel picks up right where her preceding book left off. She adeptly eases her audience into the story, reintroducing characters with minimal exposition or recapping, and even readers just joining the series shouldn’t be lost. The (occasionally) nonlinear narrative is likewise utilized to great effect; George and Mark, for example, get a report of a murder—one that, in a later scene, a drunken Max (upset over Suzy’s fate) awakens to discover. As the pandemic affects so many people, Wells includes an abundance of relevant characters, from doctors and flight attendants to President Jake Howland and his advisers in the Cabinet Room. As in the earlier book, all these players beget various relationships and accompanying obstacles: George is reluctant to be with partner and subordinate Mark; nurse Chris Noel is worried about her sickly lover, Dr. Dave Grant, as is his wife, Vicki. The no-frills narrative complements the short chapters, providing the tale with a brisk pace, especially considering that it began in the midst of the action. But, though George and Mark, along with Max, are unmistakably the protagonists, they don’t have much impact on the main plot. Quantico’s cyber-forensics team uncovers most of the leads, such as another canister, while a surprising character becomes suspicious of the person who, readers already know, is the Director. There’s a definite resolution—a couple of crucial deaths cap off some of the storylines—but plenty of lingering questions remain, enough for the series’ third entry.
A conventional thriller elevated by the author’s masterly juggling of characters and subplots.Pub Date: June 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5377-0488-3
Page Count: 338
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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