by Nicholas Petrie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2016
A powerful, empathetic, and entertaining tale about the plight many combat veterans face when they come home from Iraq and...
A debut thriller that raises questions about domestic terror and the way the American government treats its war veterans.
In the prologue, someone identified only as "the man in the black canvas chore coat” buys fertilizer at a farm supply store,clearly intending to build a bomb and evoking parallels to Timothy McVeigh. Meanwhile, Marine veteran Peter Ash sets out to repair the broken-down Milwaukee home of Jimmy Johnson, a comrade who’d committed suicide. Feeling responsible as Jimmy’s former commander, Peter tells widow Dinah Johnson that his work is part of a Marine program to assist returning vets. No such program exists, but he knows Dinah would refuse his charity, and he likes fixing old houses anyway. Under the porch he discovers a suitcase that’s guarded by a fearsome pit bull. He improvises a clever way to control the dog and finds $400,000 and bars of C4 explosive in the suitcase, hinting at a horrific attack in the wind. Ignorant of the explosives, Dinah wants no part of the money. But a scar-faced stranger is watching the house, and Peter wants to know why—perhaps the man is looking for the suitcase. The enormous dog had been Jimmy's and is named Mingus, after the jazz great Charles Mingus. The snarling monster has an overpowering stench, “a stink sharp enough to cut.” Throughout the story, Peter feels “white static” in his head anytime he’s indoors, a combat legacy that threatens to incapacitate him. Peter talks to detective Sam Lipsky about the suicide while Dinah and Peter try to find out where the money came from. Midden, the guy in the chore coat, is part of a small group of angry vets who want to teach big banks a lesson: “that the people run this country.” Now the story is about much more than Peter defeating his demons; it's about America's sorry treatment of veterans and the desperate measures a few of them might take. Meanwhile, when Peter learns the truth about Jimmy, his mission changes. The relationship between Peter and Mingus is entertaining and reveals a lot about the man’s character.
A powerful, empathetic, and entertaining tale about the plight many combat veterans face when they come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Top-notch storytelling.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17456-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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by Caitlin Mullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2020
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.
In Atlantic City, the bodies of several women wait to be discovered and a young psychic begins having visions of terrible violence.
They are known only as Janes 1 through 6, the women who have been strangled and left in the marsh behind the seedy Sunset Motel. They wait for someone to miss them, to find them. That someone might be Clara, a teenage dropout who works the Atlantic City strip as a psychic and occasionally has visions. She can tell there's something dangerous at work, but she has other problems. To pay the rent, she begins selling her company, and then her body, to older men. One day she meets Lily, another young woman who'd escaped the depressing decay of Atlantic City for New York only to be betrayed by a man. She’s come back to AC because there’s nowhere else to go, and she spends her time working a dead-end job and drinking herself into oblivion. Together, Clara and Lily may be able to figure out the truth—but they will each lose something along the way. Mullen’s style is subtle, flowing; she switches the narrative voice with each chapter, giving us Clara and Lily but also each of the victims. At the heart of the novel lies the bitter observation that “Women get humiliated every day, in small stupid ways and in huge, disastrous ones.” Mullen writes about all the moments that women compromise themselves in the face of male desire and male power and how they learn to use sex as commerce because “men are always promised this, no matter who they are.” The other major character in the novel is Atlantic City itself: fading; falling to ruin; promising an old sort of glamour that no longer exists; swindling sad, lonely people out of their money. This backdrop is unexpected and well rendered.
A lyrical, incisive, and haunting debut.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2748-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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