The most conventional and least satisfying of the antihero’s recent adventures. Bring back Beltway corruption.
Consummate D.C. insider Joe DeMarco high-tails it to Wyoming in the hope of solving the murder of a successful author who just happens to have been his ex-lover.
Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney wants his unofficial bagman and fixer to track down the person who leaked news to CNN about Mahoney’s secret meeting with two telecom CEOs looking for a merger. But DeMarco, overwhelmed by the news of Shannon Doyle’s fatal shooting, travels to the town of Waverly, Wyoming, instead. There, he learns that everybody just loved Shannon, who was on an extended visit to gather material for her second novel, but that a few people might have had it in for her anyway. Shannon’s discovery, duly recorded in the copious journal DeMarco gets access to by his usual roundabout ways, of the romance between FBI–defying rancher Hiram Bunt’s much younger wife, Lisa, and Jim Turner, the Sweetwater County deputy heading the investigation into Bunt, might have put her in the sights of Turner; his wife, Carly; or Lisa Bunt, who can’t afford to throw away the 10 years she’s invested in her cash cow of a marriage. And motel manager Sam Clarke’s daughter, Lola, a drug-addicted cleaner who almost certainly stole Shannon’s diamond earrings, might have killed her just to swipe her missing laptop as well. Despite DeMarco’s continuing disdain for the niceties of the law, he’s a lot less interesting as a sleuth than as a fixer, and the solution, which he doesn’t even uncover, will have many fans of this entertaining series demanding their money back.
The most conventional and least satisfying of the antihero’s recent adventures. Bring back Beltway corruption.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5856-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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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