The perfect in-flight read, starring a surprisingly resourceful antihero who spends much of his own time in flight.
An inoffensive printer’s troubles only begin when he’s targeted for death.
Roger Smith works for the Government Publishing Office in Washington, D.C. He has a side gig designing greeting cards. He’s a longtime widower a year from retirement whose work has always been exemplary. So why does an assassin break into his house in the middle of the night and pepper his bed with bullets? It’s too late to ask Anton LeBlanc, the hit man, since Roger managed to kill him. But Det. Grace Lillinthal, of the D.C. Metro Police, would sure like to know, and the suspicious behavior of Roger, who’s very much an amateur at this, convinces her that the killer’s motive has something to do with Roger’s connection to his neighbor John McKenna, an ex-con bar owner with many criminal connections of his own. She’s right, of course: Roger’s been crafting false passports for select McKenna clients for years. Roger has his standards. His set price of $50,000 discourages minor leaguers. He won’t make more than one phony passport a year. And he won’t help supply murderers or others who pose a danger to society. So his target clientele, scammers who’ve defrauded the wealthy, are pretty rich themselves, and one of them clearly sent LeBlanc after him. But how did the client get Roger’s name, what does he have against him, and what are the chances that the next killer he hires, or the one after that, will get to Roger before Lillinthal cracks him open? Forgoing the occasional humor of Congressional fixer Joe DeMarco’s adventures, Lawson’s stand-alone strips plot, characters, and prose down to exceptional efficiency, producing maximum thrills without a wasted word.
The perfect in-flight read, starring a surprisingly resourceful antihero who spends much of his own time in flight.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798228358188
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.
An author is targeted by a fan who just can’t let her go.
Arden Bowie has had plenty of tragedy in her life, but now she’s finally on top. After her parents died when she was a teenager, she moved from Brooklyn to Ohio to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins. She soon became part of their loving family and grew up to become a writer and bookseller. When her debut novel is published, she meets Dustin Dubecki at her first event. He showers her with praise, asks for writing advice, and wants to take her out for coffee. Arden tells herself he’s just a little awkward, but then he keeps showing up at her local events—and, even stranger, she’s sure she sees him lurking at her event in New York City. When he bursts into her apartment one night and assaults her, Arden’s calm life is shattered. Dustin gets a five-year sentence at a psychiatric facility; Arden spends most of that time rebuilding her sense of stability. Eventually, she moves to Oregon to start a new life where Dustin can never find her. But even though she has a beautiful home, a thriving career, a doting family, new friends, and even a potential love interest in a former cop named Gideon Riley, Arden can’t escape Dustin’s rage when his sentence is finally up. Roberts toggles between Arden’s point of view and Dustin’s, giving the reader occasional glimpses into his extremely twisted mindset. Although Arden’s attempts to escape Dustin are engrossing, the story stalls in the middle when far too many pages are dedicated to Arden purchasing and decorating a house. But the excitement picks back up when Dustin, a truly odious villain, re-enters the story. It’s also satisfying to see Arden grow into someone who refuses to be a victim, even as she deals with horrifying circumstances.
A particularly nasty villain heightens the stakes in this thriller about a woman learning how to be her own hero.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781250413581
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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