Riveting, even as the protagonist struggles more with losing her personal identity than espionage.
An Israeli immigrant, coding for the FBI’s Cyber Crime Unit, hopes to bring her adopted sisters to America but winds up in the midst of a cyberwar in this thriller.
Years ago, the U.S. government enlisted Zoe Mousa to migrate a PC–based system to a MAC operation. The Israeli turned out to have a turbulent family history: after Islamic extremists murdered her parents when she was 12, Zoe was raised in the Delkash household in Iran. She believes her work with the FBI will get her U.S. citizenship, giving her the right to move her sisters Sarah and Jamileh from Noshahr to America. Zoe, however, lives in Claremont Village, California, not quite the “sleepy college town” it appears to be. For starters, it’s full of spies, and Zoe barely survives when armed Russians, hunting the programmer who discovered their code, storm Automated Data Processing, where she’s on assignment. She’s surrounded by people with secrets, from Frank Darlington, hired by Dean Fritz Rolfe to conduct illegal electronic surveillance on theology professor Saul Newman, to Saul himself, whose affection for Zoe may be reciprocated. As a cyberwar looms on the horizon, Zoe’s detection code that attacks servers infected with a “spy virus” makes her a hot commodity among agencies like Homeland Security. It also puts her in danger with America’s enemies. Benzehabe (Semitic Tales: Accidental Hebrew for Christians, 2016, etc.) offers a multigenre tale, with espionage, romance, and historical references, including Edward Snowden, playing significant parts in the story. There are definite trademarks of a spy novel: one character is either a villain or an ally undercover, and Zoe is unmistakably in danger by the final act. But the most resounding moments are Zoe’s attempts at adapting, and not just in her new role as an apparent spy. As a Jewish woman raised by Muslims in Iran, she stands out whether or not she’s donning Muslim attire; people express surprise when she isn’t wearing her headscarf, or comment on her burka, which is actually a chador. There’s comic relief, meanwhile, in Zoe’s imperfect English, with her occasional slips genuinely funny (calling Saul a genital instead of a gentile); Benzehabe thankfully keeps them in moderation.
Riveting, even as the protagonist struggles more with losing her personal identity than espionage.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5353-5031-0
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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
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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