A murder story with some clever twists.
A debut novel takes readers to the campus of a small Southern college where a serial killer lurks.
The opening is eerily familiar—readers are with the unnamed killer at night as he hides in the bushes outside the college library and quickly dispatches student Heather Conley. Later he will do the same to another student, the luckless Millie Darnell. The case falls to Grady Noland, the town’s police chief, a capable enough fellow though hardly a Sherlock Holmes. Other players are Jon Evans, a mousy English professor; his wife, Doris; and Dr. Henry Andrews, the college psychologist who is central to the plot. So, who’s the culprit? There are few clues, and the college just wishes the whole embarrassing thing would go away. Meanwhile, the Evanses’ marriage is on the rocks, and Doris begins an affair with hunky cop David Parker. Soon they are meeting at his trailer for “lunch.” Jon manages to become a default suspect thanks in part to Doris’ implications. Then, midway through, there is a surprising development: readers find out who the killer is. But of course Grady is still in the dark, though he is beginning to doubt that Jon is the murderer. The key plot device here is hypnosis, something Henry is quite adept at. Jon slips under willingly because his life is such a mess and the technique affords some relief. But the psychologist harbors a sinister scheme involving hypnosis and the murder case. And Henry pulls it off—until Grady starts trying to piece together the truth. While some elements of this story are fairly standard, including the setup, Thorne provides some effective twists. The author, a psychologist, has put his experience to excellent use, deftly exploiting the hypnosis gimmick. He also has a subtle way with characters, delivering telling details, as when he shows poor obese Millie, fresh from Henry’s office, losing—incredibly quickly—her resolve to eat less or when Thorne depicts wimpy Jon beginning another hopeless day. The author also paints an effective portrait of Doris as a shallow, self-absorbed shrew. But some plot turns, such as the final scene, ask a bit too much from the audience. There is, however, an ingenious and somehow fitting denouement concerning the woebegone Jon. Readers should get a satisfying kick out of this whodunit.
A murder story with some clever twists.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5006-0366-3
Page Count: 214
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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