An admirable tie-in that gives its protagonist all the qualities that made her indelible on TV more than a decade ago.
Whip-smart teen detective Veronica Mars does some off-the-books gumshoeing for a friend in Green’s debut mystery, inspired by the cult mid-2000s TV series.
Veronica may be the least popular student at California’s Neptune High. This is largely due to her unwavering support of her dad, Keith, who accused local billionaire Jake Kane of “holding back” in the murder investigation of Jake’s daughter (and Veronica’s best friend), Lilly. This resulted in Keith’s forced exit from the sheriff’s office and his daughter’s new status as a pariah among her peers. Veronica now works part-time for her PI father and has only one friend, Wallace Fennel. She comes to Wallace’s aid after two masked assailants rob the Sac-n-Pack convenience store where he works. The stolen items include his wallet, which contained basketball-game tickets, which he received courtesy of LeBron James, a teammate at Wallace’s former school. Despite the robbers’ warning to Wallace not to mess with PCH, a local biker gang, Veronica suspects that the culprits may be fellow high schoolers. Soon, she’s interrogating schoolmates to find out who among them doesn’t have a sturdy alibi. There’s potential danger when she later confronts the actual PCH, and also a ticking clock, as the basketball game is a mere week away, and LeBron had promised to introduce Wallace to Cleveland Cavaliers coaches. Green’s novella caters both to fans of the TV show and newcomers. The plot is set early in the series’ first season, and it features numerous secondary characters from the show. The author adequately re-creates Veronica’s endearing snarkiness and affinity for pop-culture references, which many readers will appreciate. Moreover, Green skillfully incorporates the show’s ongoing subplots, most notably Veronica’s harassment at school and her drugging and rape from the previous year, which is still part of an as-yet-unsolved mystery. It’s a solid link to the episodes that also provides added complications for the heroine. Her quest to unmask the robbers is a fairly run-of-the-mill mystery, but the appealing Veronica will make readers come back for future installments.
An admirable tie-in that gives its protagonist all the qualities that made her indelible on TV more than a decade ago.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Kindle Worlds
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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