History has it that Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on his med-school teacher Dr. Joseph Bell. Not so, imagines Frost (co-creator of Twin Peaks) in his exhilarating, exuberantly melodramatic first novel: Holmes's real template was one Jack Sparks, Queen Victoria's most secret agent, who enlisted Doyle as his Watson to combat a conspiracy aimed at nothing less than incarnating Satan in human form. Doyle's a young M.D. and writer when he gets an anonymous letter imploring him to save ``an innocent's life'' from ``fraudulent'' practitioners of the ``spiritual arts''—a letter couched in the same Victorian language that Frost uses to tell his tale, and one appealing to the doctor's interest in psychic phenomena. It's this interest that has prompted Doyle to write about a ``Dark Brotherhood'' in a novel that's attracted the attention of the ``7,'' a real-life cabal of the black arts. The letter, sent by the cabal, takes Doyle to a sÇance where a demon manifests and several are slain, and from which Doyle escapes with the help of a mysterious dynamo who calls himself Jack Sparks- -though, for his deductive powers, violin playing, and cocaine addiction, he might just as well be called ``Holmes.'' Sparks tells Doyle of the 7 and of their leader, Alexander Sparks, Jack's own brother and nemesis, the crime lord of London (i.e., Moriarity). The game is afoot—and wearing running shoes—as Sparks and Doyle race from one cliffhanger to the next, mixing it up with zombies, villains, giant leeches, and femmes fatales; exploring secret tunnels and a walled castle; crossing paths with Bram Stoker, Madame Blavatsky, Jack the Ripper, and Victoria Regina—even as The Dweller on the Threshold awaits his borning.... Unabashedly corny, and lifting ideas from a dozen sources, including Nicholas Meyer (whose new Holmes pastiche, The Canary Trainer, p. 821, it far outclasses)—but a jolly good adventure yarn for that. (Film rights to Universal)
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-12245-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
