This absorbing mystery is a terrific introduction to the titular hero.
Small-town Pendleton, New York, becomes a hub for lies, murder, and conspiracy in Kreutz’s debut thriller and series launch.
Curt Cutler, a 38-year-old bank president, has long played a bizarre game with his identical twin brother, Cash. For a day or two each year, they “switch lives,” a ruse to which no one has ever caught on (“No matter what, we had to play this stupid game”). The game ends abruptly, however, in 2011, when Curt discovers his wife and Cash (pretending to be Curt) fatally shot in his home. He has no clue who the target was; did someone realize Cash was posing as Curt? Authorities suspect the surviving twin as well as Jake Chambliss (aka Jake Charm), Cash’s old friend who just recently returned to town after a decades-long absence. Curt and Jake look for someone with a motive, considering everything from a Mexican cartel’s potential involvement to whoever was trying to buy the bar that Cash owned and ran. But Jake, who may be a member of Special Forces, brings his own troubles. He’s privy to a coverup involving the Oklahoma City bombing, and a couple of corrupt FBI agents have seemingly trailed him to Pendleton. Kreutz effectively builds his mystery: the narrative initially focuses on Curt’s internal conflict as he struggles with not knowing whether he should admit who he is or continue “being Cash.” The well-drawn characters gradually complicate the narrative, including Cash’s girlfriend Skylar Meade and a news reporter who knows more about the Cutler twins than she probably should. The story ultimately shifts to center Jake, whose riveting scenes entail painstakingly shadowing people, suffering nightmares of his past, and rescuing someone who’s been taken captive. While the culprits behind other crimes, such as money laundering and another homicide, are easy to identify, that opening double murder remains an engrossing whodunit throughout. While the text includes violent imagery, the author rigidly avoids profanity, going so far as to censor a few bits of dialogue.
This absorbing mystery is a terrific introduction to the titular hero.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798889251781
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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