A first-rate introduction to energetic characters, with potential for future developments.
Years after surviving illness and tragedy, a former fixer for the Mafia becomes a target of the Russian mob in Rothman’s (Dispocalypse, 2016, etc.) thriller.
Levi Yoder gets devastating news: he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer and won’t live much longer, even with treatment. Then he makes contact with a strange, golden crosslike object that someone anonymously sent his wife, Mary, and his cancer disappears. Unfortunately, Mary dies in a car accident soon thereafter, so a despondent Levi decides to travels the world. For more than a decade, he lives in various countries, including Japan, where he studies martial arts, before finally returning to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, farm where he spent the first 18 years of his life with his Amish family. At the same time, CIA agent Madison Lewis, while monitoring Russian phone lines, overhears a conversation that sounds like it’s referring to a planned killing on U.S. soil. She also believes that the Russians are linked to the disappearance of some American nuclear bombs decades ago. Then an assassin ends up murdering two of Levi’s friends, and so Levi becomes determined to track him down. He meets a man dressed as a Buddhist monk named Amar Van, who says that Levi possesses special gifts other than fighting prowess, including the ability to heal faster than normal. These skills may prove necessary, as he and Madison face a powerful and lethal villain. Rothman constructs dynamic characters in this methodically paced novel, devoting copious pages to Levi’s globe-trekking adventure. The author reveals Madison’s pre-CIA life as a Navy diver, and Levi’s back story is likewise engrossing: he was once a fixer, working in the “gray-area of the law,” most often for his Mafia-connected pals. There are subtle hints that Levi’s and Madison’s lives will intersect over the course of the novel, but when they inevitably do, the ensuing romance feels a bit rushed. Although fisticuffs are on full display in the action scenes, the protagonist’s other abilities remain largely ambiguous. Nevertheless, it’s abundantly clear that Levi is still learning; he apparently has an eidetic memory, for example, which he’s only recently acknowledged. Perhaps these skills, and Levi and Madison’s romance, will be further expanded upon in a sequel.
A first-rate introduction to energetic characters, with potential for future developments.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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