Not as tricky and gritty as Harvey’s Kelly cases, but the appealing kids at the book's center pick up the slack and leave us...
The pursuers nearly upstage the pursued in this thriller about the brutal serial killings of young boys.
Although series protagonist PI Michael Kelly does a cameo in this latest from Chicago noir scribe Harvey, the author turns his attention to three eager journalism grad students—and the reader readily follows along. The trio—Ian Joyce (narrator), Sarah Gold and Jake Havens—enroll at Medill School of Journalism in a seminar devoted to wrongful convictions, a class that has led to the release of many unjustly imprisoned persons. The students tackle the tough case of James Harrison, convicted 14 years ago for the brutal killing of Skyler Wingate, a 10-year-old boy. Testing of blood on the convicted man’s jeans perfectly matched the victim’s DNA. Harrison went to prison, where he was murdered. Now, at Havens’ door, someone drops a note bearing the original case number and one sentence: “I KILT THE BOY.” Then, near the scene of the original crime, the students find the body of another youth, the gruesome details of his killing echoing Wingate’s murder. However well-worn, the serial-killer plot works here, first since Harvey keeps throwing tough obstacles in the investigative journalists’ paths. In unsettling scenes, thuggish Windy City police thwart and threaten, determined to keep the kids off the case. But what really propels the narrative are the tense dynamics among its three protagonists. Why is aggressive, sometimes violent Havens so obsessed with the case? What message comes in a letter a lawyer hands to shy Joyce in a prologue? Will Joyce and Gold kindle an affair? Or is she already involved with Havens? In a wily and surprising wrap-up, Harvey links both plotlines, leaving only one question unanswered: Is this the first of a spinoff series? At fade-out, narrator Joyce says the case was “...the beginning of whatever was to come.” Do the math.
Not as tricky and gritty as Harvey’s Kelly cases, but the appealing kids at the book's center pick up the slack and leave us wanting more.Pub Date: May 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-96125-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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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