Ten years after 9/11, the tropes of terrorism thrillers wear thin. For fans of Fox News, Savage’s right-wing POV (but little...
Routine thriller follows a journalist who elects to save the United States from terrorists—and from itself.
Plans to turn San Francisco into the next Ground Zero go awry when Jamal Thomas, a kid hoping to join a gang, hijacks a Prius. The driver gets away, but Jamal commandeers the vehicle, speeds into an intersection, collides with another car and suffers serious injury. Enter SFPD bomb-squad officer Tom Drabinsky, on a FAM trip with Jack Hatfield, who lost his gig as a right-wing radio commentator after the “liberal media elite” labeled him an “Islamaphobe." (Author Savage is a conservative talk-show host.) Drabinsnky is killed when a bomb in the car explodes, a bomb later determined to be of “military grade.” Hatfield sniffs a cover-up—and a story that might put him back on top—when police arrest a group known as the “Constitutional Defense Brigade" and charge them with the bombing. Convinced an Islamic cell is up to something big, Hatfield appoints himself to uncover what’s really at stake, a decision that comes as no surprise after several digressive editorial passages in which he makes clear he puts little or no trust in police, government and, to some extent, the church. (Frequently recalling Bible verses he finds reassuring, Hatfield makes clear he believes in some sort of divine wisdom.) After a group of men in dark suits take out Jamal, lest he describe the man driving the Prius, Hatfield obtains footage of their getaway car. Spotting a parking decal linked to Great Britain, Hatfield has no compunction about bribing a computer hacker to find out who the men are. Details in hand, he sprints to Israel and then to Great Britain to learn—and stop—what’s afoot.
Ten years after 9/11, the tropes of terrorism thrillers wear thin. For fans of Fox News, Savage’s right-wing POV (but little else) may lend some distinction.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65161-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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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