A frequently unnerving and intense thriller, with enough lingering uncertainty for a third installment.
A man and a woman, both victimized by a faceless organization, hope to enact their vengeance by exposing the covert group in this sequel.
Karl Morgan is brandishing a false ID when he arrives at Damian Kerr’s house in Connecticut. He’s there under the pretense of belonging to the same secret organization as Kerr. But what Karl truly wants is revenge for his dead sister, who—along with countless other women unwittingly participating in the group’s “program”—was a rape victim. Joining Karl in his quest for retribution is Dawn Flint, who endured the same sexual trauma. Following an intense interrogation of Kerr, the two allies have a name for the covert outfit (The Many) and a destination of New York. But information on The Many is scarce—likewise the number of people willing to talk about it. Unfortunately, Karl and Dawn are frighteningly oblivious as to the full extent of the group’s reach. They soon have reason to believe The Many is aware of their plan but wants them alive. This ultimately prompts Dawn to make a momentous decision that will surely impact everyone—for better or worse. Field’s (The Many, 2016, etc.) thriller, like his preceding novel, is an often bleak endeavor. The plot largely consists of Karl and Dawn’s relentless search for intelligence. But there are also harrowing instances of Dawn suffering aftereffects of her rape; she unleashes her cruel ire on a woman at a bar with little provocation. In addition, both Karl and Dawn exhibit paranoid tendencies, which ramps up suspense, as it seems anyone could be one of The Many. Field’s prose generates fraught scenes throughout: “He’d been on the lookout for sideways glances from passing cars, headlights in the rear-view mirror, and helicopters buzzing overhead.” The final act entails a time jump, a shocking character turn, and an unsettling conclusion.
A frequently unnerving and intense thriller, with enough lingering uncertainty for a third installment.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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