A smart, tense tale that keeps its classic cop drama relevant to current events.
A Philadelphia police detective looks into a shooting that may have ties to the Islamic State group in this thriller.
A good cop gets shot in a bad part of town, and it’s an all-too-common tragedy. But when the attack happens right before an event of international significance, it’s another thing entirely. Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States is underway, culminating with the World Meeting of Families, a massive set of celebrations that will bring hundreds of thousands of worshipers and travelers to Philadelphia. Only a couple of weeks beforehand, Officer Jake Loman is shot along the procession route by a man claiming to be acting on behalf of IS. While Loman survives, a chain of incidents unfolds that no one could have predicted. Detective Frank Benson, a sometime-black sheep of the Philadelphia Police Department, is unexpectedly assigned to investigate the case even though it seems open and shut at first glance. Meanwhile, he ends up paired to work on the probe with Ophelia “O” Brown-Thurman, an old friend and Loman’s platoon sergeant. In addition, Veronica Cartwright, another personal connection of Benson’s and a Secret Service agent on assignment for the pope’s visit, ends up looking into the possible terrorist link. A tangled web of old wounds and feelings emerges—everyone involved has a rocky past, but they all nonetheless have to unite to figure out the truth behind a crime that ties violent extremists, corrupt cops, and plenty of twists together. Goldstein (Murder and Mayhem in Manayunk, 2016, etc.) spins a taut page-turner with an eye toward the way international threats mix with problems closer to home. The novel’s prose is solid, and its pacing is fast, making it easy to identify the most important details of each scene while still maintaining a complex plot. The characters also work well together, particularly Benson, who’s a classic hard-boiled hero. His previous struggles with addiction and shame are deftly handled, a touch that helps prevent the sense of his character's getting lost in the procedural elements of the story.
A smart, tense tale that keeps its classic cop drama relevant to current events.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 211
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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