A well-paced thriller that engagingly tangles its hero’s personal and professional lives.
Murder, meth, and matrimonial discord bedevil a former Texas Ranger in Jimerson’s second series mystery, following White Gold (2022).
Fifty-something E.J. Kane, a former Texas Ranger and now head of security for Devekon Energy, has an arthritic knee, a stressful job, and a damaged family life. The death of his son, Konner, a Marine who died while deployed “half a world away,” marked the beginning of the unraveling of E.J.’s “quilt of a perfect family.” He and his wife, powerful trial lawyer Rebecca Johnson, divorced after the tragedy. E.J. also rescued their daughter, Sharla, a meth addict, after she was abducted and raped by sex traffickers; she now struggles with whether to get an abortion. Because of his difficult family situation, E.J. identifies with the Blakes, whose daughter, Melinda, was murdered a year ago. Crooked Sheriff Benjamin “B.B.” Berryhill can’t be bothered with the Blakes’ unsolved case, but B.B.’s son, a police detective, vows to help, as does E.J. Meanwhile, E.J. is consumed by the fact that Aryan Triangle member and murderer G.H. Burton has been released from prison; his conviction—hard fought by Rebecca—was overturned. This character-driven novel is just as much a tale of family troubles as it is a mystery. A familiar story of meth addiction affectingly spills across the pages, as does the pain of a divorce that one side doesn’t want, in addition to problems of aging. The book’s initial fast pace establishes E.J.’s gruff but helpful character, but he also questions if he’s a lawman who’s outlived his era. The dialogue stays sharp, and descriptions can be strong (“He carried her like a sack of feed swinging wildly”). One flaw is that so much of the story relies on readers knowing what happened in the previous book in the series—or at least requires Jimerson to recap those events. But the author, a Texas attorney, has the real-life experience to back up his storyline, and he gets bonus points for referencing Chuck Norris.
A well-paced thriller that engagingly tangles its hero’s personal and professional lives.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798218409852
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Elwood Jimerson Farms
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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