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
Creepy and compelling.
A friendship between two very different women is threatened when long-buried secrets rise to the surface.
Lonely and overweight stay-at-home mother Frances Metcalfe feels like an outsider among the stylish moms at Seattle’s exclusive Forrester Academy. It doesn’t help that her son, Marcus, whom she fiercely loves in spite of his challenges, has ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder, which causes him to act out in alarming ways. She knows that her handsome husband, Jason, loves her, but she's painfully aware of the stares she gets that seem to ask how someone like him could be with someone like her. When the beautiful, elegant Kate Randolph befriends Frances, she’s thrilled, and Kate’s son, Charles, proves to be a calming influence on Marcus. Sleepovers for the kids and get-togethers with Kate and her husband, Robert, become the norm, and Kate brings out an adventurous side of Frances that she thought was lost underneath the stress of caring for Marcus. However, Kate’s 14-year-old daughter Daisy’s behavior is becoming increasingly self-destructive, calling attention to a darkness that lies just beneath the intoxicating veneer of Kate and Frances’ friendship. And there is real darkness here: One of these women is really Amber Kunik, who was involved in the sensationalized murder of 15-year-old Courtney Carey in 1996, supposedly while under the control of an abusive boyfriend—but is it Frances or Kate? Harding (The Party, 2017, etc.) expertly builds subtle menace and does her best to keep readers guessing as to which woman is Amber, whose heinous crimes are revealed through snippets of her chilling courtroom testimony. When Amber’s identity is finally revealed, the other woman must decide whether forgiveness is possible while confronting her own dark secret. A bit of gallows humor, such as when Frances fantasizes outrageous ways that she could kill a mom who’s particularly rude to her, leavens the dark subject matter.
Creepy and compelling.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7424-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir...
Dr. Alex Cross has left Metro DC Homicide for the FBI, but it’s business as usual in this laughably rough-hewn fairy tale of modern-day white slavery.
According to reliable sources, more people are being sold into slavery than ever before, and it all seems to be going down on the FBI’s watch. Atlanta ex-reporter Elizabeth Connolly, who looks just like Claudia Schiffer, is the ninth target over the past two years to be abducted by a husband-and-wife pair who travel the country at the behest of the nefarious Pasha Sorokin, the Wolf of the Red Mafiya. The only clues are those deliberately left behind by the kidnappers, who snatch fashion designer Audrey Meek from the King of Prussia Mall in full view of her children, or patrons like Audrey’s purchaser, who ends up releasing her and killing himself. Who you gonna call? Alex Cross, of course. Even though he still hasn’t finished the Agency’s training course, all the higher-ups he runs into, from hardcases who trust him to lickspittles seething with envy, have obviously read his dossier (Four Blind Mice, 2002, etc.), and they know the new guy is “close to psychic,” a “one-man flying squad” who’s already a legend, “like Clarice Starling in the movies.” It’s lucky that Cross’s reputation precedes him, because his fond creator doesn’t give him much to do here but chase suspects identified by obliging tipsters and worry about his family (Alex Jr.’s mother, alarmed at Cross’s dangerous job, is suing for custody) while the Wolf and his cronies—Sterling, Mr. Potter, the Art Director, Sphinx, and the Marvel—kidnap more dishy women (and the occasional gay man) and kill everybody who gets in their way, and quite a few poor souls who don’t.
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir the slightest sympathy.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-60290-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
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