An Ocean’s 11–type tale of an intriguing oenophile underworld.
A broke, blue blood gamester grooms a wine-savvy “rube” for a high-stakes tasting competition in this crime novel.
Nattily dressed Trilby is “toying with a glass of Crozes-Hermitage” in a New York City wine bar when a leggy beauty saunters in. After she orders a Gamay, a jeans-clad yokel named Bobby arrives and tries to flirt with her. She says that if he can tell her what she’s drinking by tasting it, she’ll provide her phone number. He surprisingly nails it, and she throws a glassful of wine in his face and storms off. Trilby springs into action and sets up a taste test (called a “blind”) for Bobby, who manages to identify a series of wines. The newcomer reveals that he recently arrived from Omaha, where his dad was in the wine business. Trilby then takes Bobby to a blind betting event, which he wins. This spurs Trilby to prepare his protégé for La Paulée, the top blind competition, run by shady Hong Kong-based Johnny Tan and coming soon to San Francisco. He trains Bobby using the wine cellar in his inherited, but now heavily mortgaged, brownstone. Bobby wins several run-up events, including one at Sotheby’s. There, Johnny is dazzled by Katya, a Russian billionaire’s daughter, who places a $200,000 bet on Bobby for the upcoming La Paulée. Worried about covering that gamble, Johnny brings in a one-eyed man, Sommurai, who bested Trilby at a previous competition, and blackmails La Paulée’s presiding judge to rig the event. Trilby waits to place his all-in bet until the eleventh hour, leading to a conclusion that prompts him to “cry and laugh simultaneously.” Debut novelist Amon brings plenty of Pulp Fiction–style punch to this rollicking story of wine-snob grifters. He relates the drugs-and-sex sleaze of Tan and his crew with gusto, as well as the mechanics of setting odds and other details of blinding events. The narrative moves frothily along with plenty of dramatic suspense, giving readers a growing sense of a looming double cross. Some readers may find the revelation of a major scam to be a bit far-fetched, and one character’s pedophilia pushes the envelope of acceptable edginess. Overall, however, Amon has crafted a fast-paced, entertaining caper.
An Ocean’s 11–type tale of an intriguing oenophile underworld.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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