An uneven supernatural romance/mystery.
In Matz’s (Help! Get Me Out of This Funk, 2010) novel, a young widow moves to Washington state and becomes embroiled in an odd mystery.
During a 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado, Carter loses her parents and her husband, Ethan. Grief-stricken, she relocates to Tacoma, Wash., to be near her grandmother and her cousin Stacey Hall. “Man-hungry” Stacey has always flitted from one guy to the next, often driving them away with her neediness. After Stacey meets a group of elderly ladies at their south Seattle home, she goes on to take a female lover. Carter, believing Stacey’s behavior to be out of character, accompanies her to meet the old women. She notes that the ladies serve their guests wine and strange, spicy meatloaf and, later, escort their guests to the rear of the house for unknown reasons. Soon after this visit, Stacey vanishes; her house is littered with dirt, blood and mud, reminiscent of a crime scene. In Stacey’s fridge, Carter finds some of the mysterious meatloaf; later, she finds it in her own home. Concurrently, Carter develops a strong sexual attraction to a policeman named Connor, who helps her search for Stacey; they find out that her cousin’s disappearance may be related to local legends about erupting volcanoes. The story can be endearingly wacky at times, with its crazy quilt of romance and supernatural elements and moments of humor; at one point, for example, Carter slowly but surely turns the color of pumpkin pie. The novel also manages to generate some occasional suspense, but it struggles with an improbable plot and repetitive prose. In the end, readers may find that the suspense eventually devolves into frustration, as Carter’s encounters with dirt, mud and spicy meat become routine.
An uneven supernatural romance/mystery.Pub Date: July 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482554243
Page Count: 190
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Bulky, balky, talky.
In an updated quest for the Holy Grail, the narrative pace remains stuck in slo-mo.
But is the Grail, in fact, holy? Turns out that’s a matter of perspective. If you’re a member of that most secret of clandestine societies, the Priory of Sion, you think yes. But if your heart belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the Grail is more than just unholy, it’s downright subversive and terrifying. At least, so the story goes in this latest of Brown’s exhaustively researched, underimagined treatise-thrillers (Deception Point, 2001, etc.). When Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon—in Paris to deliver a lecture—has his sleep interrupted at two a.m., it’s to discover that the police suspect he’s a murderer, the victim none other than Jacques Saumière, esteemed curator of the Louvre. The evidence against Langdon could hardly be sketchier, but the cops feel huge pressure to make an arrest. And besides, they don’t particularly like Americans. Aided by the murdered man’s granddaughter, Langdon flees the flics to trudge the Grail-path along with pretty, persuasive Sophie, who’s driven by her own need to find answers. The game now afoot amounts to a scavenger hunt for the scholarly, clues supplied by the late curator, whose intent was to enlighten Sophie and bedevil her enemies. It’s not all that easy to identify these enemies. Are they emissaries from the Vatican, bent on foiling the Grail-seekers? From Opus Dei, the wayward, deeply conservative Catholic offshoot bent on foiling everybody? Or any one of a number of freelancers bent on a multifaceted array of private agendas? For that matter, what exactly is the Priory of Sion? What does it have to do with Leonardo? With Mary Magdalene? With (gulp) Walt Disney? By the time Sophie and Langdon reach home base, everything—well, at least more than enough—has been revealed.
Bulky, balky, talky.Pub Date: March 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50420-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
Lacking in both thrills and chills.
Another homage to classic horror from a bestselling author.
Sager’s debut novel, Final Girls (2017), wasn’t so much a horror novel as a commentary about horror movies in novel form. It was clever but also very well-crafted. The author tried to do something similar with The Last Time I Lied (2018), with significantly less satisfying results. This new novel is another attempt to make the model work. Whether or not it does depends on how invested one is in formula for the sake of formula. Jules Larsen is getting over a breakup and the loss of her job when she finds a gig that seems too good to be true: The Bartholomew, a storied Manhattan building, wants to pay her thousands of dollars to simply occupy a vacant—and luxurious—apartment. Jules soon gets the feeling that all is not as it seems at the Bartholomew, which is, of course, a perfect setup for some psychological suspense, but the problem is that there is little in the way of narrative tension because Jules’ situation is so obviously not right from the very beginning. While interviewing for the job, she's asked about her health history. She's informed that she is not allowed to have guests in the apartment. She's warned that she must not interact with or talk to anyone else about the building’s wealthy and famous inhabitants. And she learns that she will be paid under the table. While this might not be enough to deter someone who is broke and desperate, it does mean that Jules should be a bit more concerned than she is when the really scary stuff starts happening. It’s possible to read this as a parody of the absurdly intrepid horror heroine, but, even as that, it’s not a particularly entertaining parody. Jules’ best friend makes a reference to American Horror Story, which feels less like a postmodern nod than a reminder that there are other, better examples of the genre that one could be enjoying instead.
Lacking in both thrills and chills.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4514-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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