This grisly thriller will sink its teeth right in you.
Fields’ sequel to Twin River (2013) sees a killer for hire enter the lives of two troubled Pennsylvania teens.
Polecat Hollow, near Alexandria, Pennsylvania, is home to high school sophomores Matt Henry and Connor Brooks. It’s 1980, and the boys have had trouble with local bullies Cain and Abel Tower as well as other assorted felons (see Twin River). Insisting to any inquiring party that his father, a bank manager, is on vacation, Matt decides to hire some protection for himself and the bank. A newspaper ad leads him to a man named Wesley Palladin of the agency Have Weapons Will Travel. Unbeknownst to Matt, Palladin is a contract killer for the mob, embroiled in a complex bait-and-switch operation that has other killers gunning for him. Cain and Abel, meanwhile, are terrorizing a teen named Wayne Wilson, whose sister, Becky, Cain has impregnated. Elsewhere in the region—which is possessed by a violent legacy dating back to the mid-18th century—a vile gang of kidnappers is using high school girls to make pornographic videos. Once drawn together, Matt and Palladin learn just how alike they are as they wage war against the various forms of evil that nearby Blood Mountain seems to inspire. Snaring readers once more in the sinister rural setting of Twin River, author Fields proves himself a macabre, versatile storyteller. The tone of his sprawling narrative darkens immediately, beginning on a river in late ’60s Florida. On this fishing trip–turned-murder, young Palladin’s father teaches him that “The best and the strongest destroy and survive.” Fields’ gift for detailing violence is always at the ready: “Pulled by the treble [fish] hooks, the man’s skin stretched outward.” Yet the descriptions of nature are lush, and literary references to Catcher in the Rye are a welcome surprise: “A person needs to catch himself first before he can catch others.” If possible, readers should tackle the previous novel beforehand for better context surrounding characters’ relationships. Standing alone, however, this tale remains incredibly effective.
This grisly thriller will sink its teeth right in you.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491744468
Page Count: 318
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
There’s nothing romantic about Joe’s preoccupation with Beck, but Kepnes puts the reader so deep into his head that...
An impending sense of dread hangs over Kepnes’ cleverly claustrophobic debut, in which love takes on a whole new meaning.
Told from the perspective of Joe Goldberg, a seemingly normal Manhattan bookstore employee, the narrative is structured like a long monologue to the titular “you”: a young woman, Guinevere Beck, who becomes the object of Joe’s obsessive affection. They meet casually enough at the bookstore, and since she’s an aspiring writer just starting an MFA program, they bond over literature. Seems innocuous enough, even sweet, until we learn just how far Joe will go to make Beck—her preferred name—his own. Kepnes makes keen use of modern technology to chronicle Joe and Beck’s “courtship”: He not only stalks her on Twitter, but hacks into her email account and, after casually lifting her cellphone, monitors her text messages. In Joe’s mind, he’s keeping Beck safe from what he perceives as dangers in her life, particularly the clingy, wealthy Peach Salinger (yes, a relative of that Salinger); Beck’s hard-partying ex, Benji; and her therapist, the smooth-talking Dr. Nicky. When Joe and Beck finally, inevitably get together, it only serves to ratchet up Joe’s predatory, possessive instincts. Every text is analyzed as if it were the German Enigma Code, and every email is parsed and mined for secret meaning. There’s little doubt that the relationship is doomed, but Kepnes keeps the reader guessing on just how everything will implode.
There’s nothing romantic about Joe’s preoccupation with Beck, but Kepnes puts the reader so deep into his head that delusions approach reality.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 9781476785592
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.
A young Philadelphia policewoman searches for her addicted sister on the streets.
The title of Moore’s (The Unseen World, 2016, etc.) fourth novel refers to “a long bright river of departed souls,” the souls of people dead from opioid overdoses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. The book opens with a long paragraph that's just a list of names, most of whom don’t have a role in the plot, but the last two entries are key: “Our mother. Our father.” As the novel opens, narrator Mickey Fitzpatrick—a bright but emotionally damaged single mom—is responding with her partner to a call. A dead girl has turned up in an abandoned train yard frequented by junkies. Mickey is terrified that it will be her estranged sister, Kacey, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. The two were raised by their grandmother, a cold, bitter woman who never recovered from the overdose death of the girls' mother. Mickey herself is awkward and tense in all social situations; when she talks about her childhood she mentions watching the other kids from the window, trying to memorize their mannerisms so she could “steal them and use them [her]self.” She is close with no one except her 4-year-old son, Thomas, whom she barely sees because she works so much, leaving him with an unenthusiastic babysitter. Opioid abuse per se is not the focus of the action—the book centers on the search for Kacey. Obsessed with the possibility that her sister will end up dead before she can find her, Mickey breaches protocol and makes a series of impulsive decisions that get her in trouble. The pace is frustratingly slow for most of the book, then picks up with a flurry of revelations and developments toward the end, bringing characters onstage we don’t have enough time to get to know. The narrator of this atmospheric crime novel has every reason to be difficult and guarded, but the reader may find her no easier to bond with than the other characters do.
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54067-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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