by Mark Murphy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 2012
An enjoyable, well-written and twisty thriller with gruesome aspects balanced by warmth, believable relationships and a...
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A Savannah doctor’s life turns upside down when people suspect him of serial murder in this thriller tinged with the supernatural.
Surgeon Malcolm King is a good man living a good life in this fast-paced and suspenseful first novel by Murphy, a gastroenterologist and columnist for the Savannah Morning News. Malcolm has a loving family, a faithful golden retriever and a beautiful house. So when people link him to a series of gruesome murders, he’s desperate to discover the truth—at times even wondering if his sanity is slipping and he himself might be the killer. To avoid capture, Malcolm goes on the run, aided by a mysterious Thin Man who may or may not be trustworthy. As horrific murders of people close to him continue, Malcolm fights to protect his family and stop the killer. His good-guy hero faces an impossible situation full of spooky, atmospheric details reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart’s plight in a Hitchcock movie, and the thriller aspect works especially well since the book grounds it in ordinary happiness. Malcolm’s wife and daughter, even his dog, are fully realized, not pawns in a horror show; the Savannah setting is lushly detailed; and it’s easy to see what Malcolm has to lose. His work also comes across as both realistic—one day ranges from “ruptured appendices and walled-off diverticular abscesses to a Billroth II gastric resection”—and horribly similar to the killer’s grisly dissections. Flashes of humor help to ease the tension, and the camaraderie between Malcolm and other characters is a reminder that human connections can stand against evil. The sturdy plot structure includes red herrings, family secrets and a new direction just when it looks like it’s all over. Two clichés, each a bit of a groaner, mar the book somewhat: a noble, spiritual Native American and a medical condition often unfairly linked to villainy. The supernatural elements add little to the plot and can seem a bit pat, but they don’t get in the way of a satisfying finish.
An enjoyable, well-written and twisty thriller with gruesome aspects balanced by warmth, believable relationships and a likable hero.Pub Date: July 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1938296031
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Langdon Street Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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