Fans of the treasure-hunting subgenre will be more than satiated with this solid outing.
In Wright’s debut thriller, a man tries to outwit a group of thugs that thinks that he knows the location of a long-lost Spanish treasure.
Hunter Pierce, with a gun to his head, tells Roberto and Abilio Ibanez and their cohorts that he can lead them to a fortune in gold reputedly hidden by Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda back in the 16th century. The Ibanez family has been looking for the treasure for a long time. Fourteen years earlier, their search took them to Waterhole Branch in Alabama, where they massacred Hunter’s family and abducted Hunter’s childhood friend Camilla and her mother. In the present day, Hunter tries to find a way to escape the Spanish family’s clutches, as well as save the kidnapped Camilla, still by Abilio’s side. Luckily, Hunter texted a plea for help to friend and former Navy SEAL Brian Andrews, but he can stall the bad guys for only so long. The novel opens with a Glock 19 pressed against Hunter’s temple. This, unsurprisingly, makes way for many flashbacks, but Wright knows how to generate suspense; readers won’t know whether Hunter has found the gold until halfway into the book. Some of the flashbacks follow a preteen Hunter growing up in Alabama with Camilla and Brian. These interrupt tense moments with the protagonist and the armed Spaniards but are generally pertinent scenes, like the young trio’s rather ferocious paintball game that foreshadows Hunter and Brian’s evading men with real guns. But the back story can, on occasion, be extraneous. Hunter, for example, becomes obsessed with finding the gold (revenge for the men killing his family), but we don’t need the overlong description of his pledging a fraternity to “make powerful friends.” Wright ably chronicles a protagonist tortured by the loss of his family: Hunter’s determination to acquire the treasure gradually takes over his life, and he starts drinking heavily, eventually dabbling in cocaine. There’s a hint of what happened during Camilla’s 14-year capture, but the fascinating subplot is unfortunately over too soon. An explosive ending, however, with gunfire and a grenade or two, is drawn out to a gratifying conclusion.
Fans of the treasure-hunting subgenre will be more than satiated with this solid outing.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496942999
Page Count: 392
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2015
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
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