Endorsed by Charlaine Harris, another author in love with her feisty female lead, Wirestone’s franchise will appeal to those...
A decidedly twitchy personality finds herself investigating the geek-gamer world of a video game tournament, with only her roommate’s boyfriend and some highly questionable followers to give her support.
Dahlia Moss is pretty sure the $500 tip she received via her Twitch feed isn’t just a gesture of appreciation for her internet monologue. That's the kind of cash someone gives when they want something in return. So when the donor, whose screen name is Doctor XXX, asks to meet her in a private chat room, Dahlia is the opposite of surprised. Doctor XXX wants Dahlia to come to a tournament celebrating Dark Alleys, which he claims could benefit from some oversight by a budding investigator like Dahlia. In spite of her adventures in her last case (The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss, 2015), including taking a bullet, Dahlia resolves to fulfill this installment’s title by agreeing to meet this internet stranger at the video game contest. Though she wishes she could bring her roommate, Charice, a manic pixie she thinks would be a perfect dream girl for the video game world, she’s instead saddled with a wholly inadequate substitute: Daniel Simone, Charice’s man of the month. Daniel’s mainly interested in practicing his Australian accent for auditions, but Charice seems determined to foster a friendship between Daniel and Dahlia. Does that mean Daniel might last longer than the month? On arriving at the tournament, Dahlia and Daniel find that the man behind the meetup may have been murdered. The two search the tournament’s wacky range of geeky gamer-testants for answers and the identity of the mysterious Doctor XXX, all the time wondering if the $20,000 in prize money is enough to motivate a killer.
Endorsed by Charlaine Harris, another author in love with her feisty female lead, Wirestone’s franchise will appeal to those willing to fall for his heroine as hard as he has.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-31638-601-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Koontz widens his canvas dramatically while dimming the hard brilliance common to his shorter winners:1995’s taut masterpiece, Intensity, and 1998’s moon-drenched midsummer nightmare, Seize the Night. This time the author takes up mind control, wiring his tale into the brainwashing epics The Manchurian Candidate and last spring’s film The Matrix. The laser-beam brightness of his earlier bestsellers fades, however, as he stuffs each scene with draining chitchat and extra plotting that seldom rings with novelty. Martine “Martie” Rhodes, a video-game designer, has developed a rare mental disorder: autophobia, fear of oneself. Meanwhile, her husband Dusty’s young half-brother, Skeet Caulfield, has decided to jump off the roof of a building the two men are repairing—because Skeet has seen the Angel of the next world, who has revealed that things are pretty wonderful there, and he wants to come on over. Martie’s best friend, real-estate agent Susan Jagger, is newly coping with agoraphobia, fear of the outdoors. What’s more, Susan knows she’s being visited and raped at night by her separated husband, Eric, although all her doors and windows are locked. She can’t remember these rapes, but her panties are stained with semen. So when she sets up a camcorder to record her sleeping hours, she gets a huge surprise after viewing the tape. How these mental and physical events have come about—ditto the psychiatric background of the Keanuphobe millionairess who shows up (yes! she fears Keanu Reeves)—has something to do with the ladies’ psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Ahriman, the son of a famous dead movie director whose eyes the doctor keeps in a bottle of formaldehyde and studies, in hopes of siphoning off Dad’s inspiration. Although the whole story could have been told to better effect in 300 pages, Koontz deftly sidesteps clichÇs of expression while nonetheless applying an air pump to the suspense: an MO that keeps his yearly 17-million book sales afloat.
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10666-X
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Utter non-scents.
Die-hard Yankee candle maker Stella Wright (Murder’s No Votive Confidence, 2018) gets caught up in a trans-Atlantic murder plot.
Stella thoroughly enjoys her trip to Paris even though her mother, perfume expert Millie Wright, who’s scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “The Art of Scent Extractions” at the World Perfumery Conference, gets preempted by a murder. Sadly, once they’re back home in Nantucket, things get even weirder. Stella receives an anonymous note threatening her mom if Stella doesn’t turn over a secret formula hidden in Millie’s bag. Her mom can’t help because she’s in the hospital courtesy of an overenthusiastic attempt by Stella’s cat, Tinker, to befriend her. While trespassing on a suspicious sailboat, Stella meets U.S. Agent Sarah Hill, who warns her that well-known anarchist Rex Laruam plans to disrupt the upcoming Peace Jubilee using a stolen formula he secreted in Millie’s bag after he stabbed the agent guarding it back in Paris. Ignoring the advice of her friend Andy Southerland, a Nantucket cop, to leave detection to the professionals, Stella tries to unmask the elusive Laruam. As she spies on a bevy of unlikely suspects, the plot spirals further and further out of control: There’s a Canadian couple staying at an Airbnb run by Stella’s cousin Chris who whisper sweet but suspicious nothings in the dark, a shovel-wielding schoolmarm, a gang of old geezers who have a collective crush on Millie, a surprise 30th-birthday party planned by Stella’s beau, Peter Bailey, and an even more surprising impromptu airplane ride.
Utter non-scents.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2141-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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