Bloody battle scenes fuel this futuristic and engaging story of justice and survival.
Two warriors in a vigilante consortium fight against governmental corruption in this novel.
West’s Mad Max–style thriller is set in an apocalyptic version of Southern California several decades in the future. After a catastrophic earthquake rocks the region, the massive destruction—and lack of intervention from regional leadership and influential corporations—causes a general feeling of unrest, dissension, and suspicion of authority, resulting in the founding of several radical militia groups aimed at curbing police corruption. One such group, the Stay Ready Soldiers, is headed by the novel’s malevolent, marijuana-smoking main characters Kali and Geronimo. The SRS pride themselves on aggressively defying leaders that openly betray the Americans they’re supposed to serve: “The government had turned against its own people, and Los Angeles was on the verge of martial law.” Acknowledging that “the City of Angels had become a cesspool of corruption, disease, poverty, and violence,” the armed and angry coalition battles militant police whose mission is to eliminate rebels—particularly the members of the SRS, for whom “the protocol was always shoot to kill.” The novel acquires most of its narrative momentum from this initial setup and the fact that the action occurs over the course of about a single day. The story encompasses resilient main characters, futuristic weaponry, bloody shootouts, and the classic tenets of good versus evil. Overall, it’s a fast-paced ride that should engage fans of techno-thrillers. More hardcore SRS operatives with nicknames such as Dirt, Horse, Numbers, and Bunchy are introduced in the narrative, but Kali and Geronimo consistently take the lead traveling in underground service tunnels and even partaking in interdimensional travel to stealthily strategize and preserve the greater good.
It should be noted, however, that West’s story is not at all for readers who may be faint of heart. The pages overflow with raw dialogue, explicit bloodshed, and torture-filled interrogations as well as sexual assault. From the opening scenes to the chaotic, open-ended conclusion inside Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum, West’s tale offers “an explosive array of death-defying stunts,” just as its narration notes, and it never skimps on describing the many grisly details along the way. Plotting against the SRS is a band of vicious CIA–contracted civil defense mercenaries in a roving “war machine”; its only direction is to slaughter and rid the state of organized bands of opponents. These soldiers are part of the Black Hawk Battalion, an impressively equipped team with microchipped brain stems and advanced weaponry that allows it to overwhelm its targets. The inclusion of these military men makes the story oddly haunting, on the whole, due to its timely mirroring of recent events involving standoffs between protesting citizens and riot-geared police officers. SRS’s tagline, “Freedom Justice Equality,” is one that will distinctly resonate among people who are currently fighting for the same rights. Those readers who are able to stomach the novel’s violent content will find its themes and fearless characters to be both remarkable and relevant.
Bloody battle scenes fuel this futuristic and engaging story of justice and survival.Pub Date: March 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73469-220-4
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Foundations 4 Readiness
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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