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Doppelganger

Name: Doppelganger
Author: Marc Seifer
ISBN: 978-1-931261-15-9

From the Rudy Styne Quadrilogy series , Vol. 2

by Marc Seifer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 2016

An often engaging thriller series installment that’s worth a read.

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Seifer (Rasputin’s Nephew, 2016, etc.) gives readers two stories for the price of one in this sequel, set in 2016 and during the first world war.

The present-day tale features Rudy Styne, Modern Times Magazine’s ace reporter. He’s investigating a series of high-profile computer attacks and trying to figure out just who a hacker named “CodeBreaker Morant” is, and more crucially, who “NTroodr,” a sinister cracker, is; a hacker, readers learn, is usually harmless, but a cracker definitely isn’t. NTroodr may be planning to crash the entire World Wide Web and time is short. Rudy thinks that Ashley La Polla, a computer genius at MIT, may be Morant, but then she winds up dead. Rudy also spots a fellow named Rolf Linzman who, though a few years older, could be Rudy’s identical twin; somehow, Rudy and Rolf are related, but how? Later, Rudy’s elderly Uncle Abe shows up at Rudy and his fiancee Chessie’s wedding; he’s tied to a parallel story that takes readers to Germany at the turn of the last century. In it, Elias Maxwell has a burgeoning company called Maxwell-Bavarian Machine Works. His younger brother, Simon, is a first-class mechanic who’s enamored of this new invention: a flying machine. A decade later, during World War I, Simon finds himself dogfighting with, and killing, men who were his brothers in the early aeronautic fraternity. The story behind Rudy’s mysterious parentage, among other resolutions, is held over until the forthcoming third installment, Crystal Night, which will strike some readers as clever and others as unsportsmanlike. This book could have used a stronger edit to trim it down and catch errors (a very old man isn’t automatically an “antiquarian,” for example, and the canal waters of Venice, Italy, are likely not “effervescent”). But the author’s depiction of the early aviation era is thorough and interesting, and his handling of Simon’s torment is truly wrenching as the character’s inner conflict—exacerbated by the enthusiastic spirit of his morally challenged mates, who see downing planes as exciting sport—drives him to tragedy.

An often engaging thriller series installment that’s worth a read.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-931261-15-9

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doorway Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.