Alpert, one of the best writers after Michael Crichton at transforming futuristic science into believable fiction, devises...
In Alpert's latest nanotech thriller, a space probe from a solar system 200 light-years away lands with an explosive bang in a marginal area of Manhattan, infecting several park regulars with malevolent alien technology.
Inwood Hill Park, a historic piece of old New York near the Hudson River, is the site of the crash, where black metallic tentacles snake out from the bowling ball–like probe, hook into the city's power grid, and shock the unsuspecting humans. The first of its targets is Joe, a one-time doctor who has fallen on such drunken hard times after his wife kicked him out that he sleeps in the park in a cardboard box. Injected with a brain implant, he is issued commands from a voice inside his head. Dorothy, a former minister suffering from cancer, is spiked in the foot by a tentacle when she goes to help Joe and is introduced to an even worse kind of suffering. After Emilio, a former gang member, comes into contact with the alien metal, he finds himself gunning down Special Tactics soldiers called to the scene. The fate of the world is largely left in the hands of NASA Sky Survey expert Sarah Pooley. When she first detected the object crashing to Earth, she suspected it was a Russian probe. Now, she only wishes it were. Alpert (The Six, 2015, etc.) does a masterful job of establishing this grave threat to humankind; the book is full of unsettling moments. But as fresh and convincing as his vision is, it runs aground in the home stretch. The ending, including tepid explanations of the probe's origins, feels rushed. And in indicting mankind's violent and destructive ways, the AI voice of the aliens, Emissary, comes across as a pale imitation of Klaatu, the humanoid in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Alpert, one of the best writers after Michael Crichton at transforming futuristic science into believable fiction, devises such a scary scenario here, it's a shame he doesn't develop it further.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06541-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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