A superbly rendered actioner with an intriguing setting.
In Collins’ thriller set in the late 1990s and early 2000s,a desperate but resourceful physician goes on the run in the Scottish Highlands after crossing a bloodthirsty gang of international mobsters.
A shieling, according to Scottish tradition, is a “primitive hut erected in a remote area to facilitate the process of transhumance.” It’s also the kind of place that Dr. David Carroll of Oak Brook, Illinois, figures will be the perfect place to hide after he refuses to bow to the whims of gangster Dimitri Barkov and his murderous clan. The Barkovs want to buy David’s medical practice and use it for their own ends. Unbeknownst to the gangsters, David is far from the pampered, privileged American they make him and his partners out to be. The doc once knocked out a 260-pound football player with one punch, and at another point, he completed a marathon in under three hours—with a broken foot. However, when University of Aberdeen doctoral student Catriona Gordon discovers him residing inside the shieling she’s staked out as part of her dissertation, she immediately dislikes him. It turns out that this shieling, located on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, dates to the 1400s—and in Catriona’s eyes, this wayward weirdo’s attempts to clean it up has ruined it. Readers may find the ensuing relationship between David and Catriona to be somewhat predictable. However, it doesn’t detract from the rising tension in the rest of this high-stakes narrative, as the furiously violent Barkovs move in for the kill. Overall, Collins offers a taut cat-and-mouse thriller in which David gamely tries to evade death and prison. When he finally decides to go toe-to-toe with the Barkovs, the results prove to be horrific and life-changing for everyone involved. Fortunately for the fugitive physician, he gets help from friends and supporters along the way.
A superbly rendered actioner with an intriguing setting.Pub Date: June 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781038306876
Page Count: 348
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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