A fast-paced, if sometimes-unbelievable, romantic thriller.
A straight-arrow lawyer pursues a local mob boss and enjoys a little romance on the side.
District attorney Shannon McKane has just won the case of her career, sending Valentine Fox, the ne’er-do-well son of a local crime kingpin, to prison for manslaughter. Now, Sebastian Fox, Valentine’s father, is out for blood. He’s determined to free his son and destroy the career of the squeaky-clean young lawyer who put him away—especially as she’s targeting him next. Shannon is almost unbelievably wholesome; her passions are art and poetry and she’s “never been close to any man”—until she meets handsome doctor Mark Jarvis during a morning stroll on the beach. Shannon falls hard for him, but could this mysterious man of her dreams be hiding something? And why is the conniving Sebastian so confident that he’ll be able to eliminate Shannon once and for all? Fans of suspenseful romance will delight in this page-turner from Anez (Ripper’s Fog, 2016, etc.), which offers both courtroom thrills and sweet, sexy love scenes. However, they’ll have to overlook some ham-fisted characterizations. Shannon’s innocence and naïveté when it comes to relationships doesn’t quite square with her tough-as-nails image as a prosecutor. Sebastian seems intended to be suavely menacing, but his flowery dialogue is more corny than scary, especially when delivering lines such as “When I’m through with her, then I believe it will be time for the final thrust, the coup de gras, [sic] so to speak.” More believable is Jeff Connolly, a police officer whose love for Shannon is unrequited and who helps steady the book’s occasional moments of melodrama. An action-packed resolution comes on a bit fast and won’t sit well with some readers, though Anez manages to make the somewhat unconventional conclusion work.
A fast-paced, if sometimes-unbelievable, romantic thriller.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5331-1942-1
Page Count: 186
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
With only a sliver less suspense, Koontz follows up 1996's Intensity with an afterlife novel about a plane crash. Los Angeles crime reporter Joe Carpenter (ah, those initials) needs resurrecting. One year ago his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Chrissie and little Nina, actually did die in a devastating plane crash over Colorado: no survivors. In a dive, the plane had rocketed straight into millennial rock, leaving only two pieces larger than a car door. Joe, locked in unbearable grief, has quit work, sold his house, moved to a studio apartment over a garage, and is gnawing himself to death with weight loss. Meetings with a compassionate survivor group haven't helped. Rage and anger with an unjust God in whom Joe doesn't believe takes up all his energy. Then visiting his wife and children's graves, Joe finds Dr. Rose Tucker, a black Asian woman with great presence who's taking Polaroids of his family's burial sites. She tells him she survived the crash! But suddenly two men appear and start shooting at her as she races off. Joe soon finds himself involved in unraveling a suicide plague that has struck relatives of the plane's dead. Rose has taken Polaroids of the graves of other relatives as well—but whoever gets one of her pictures first sees a blissful image of the afterlife, then commits suicide, often horribly. As Joe tracks Rose down, he hears that a little girl survived with her, a girl named Nina. Has mankind reached a turning point, as Dr. Tucker avers, at which science has now proven the existence of the afterlife? Funded by a multibillionaire, a secret but massive scientific effort larger than the Manhattan Project has made fantastic strides in the paranormal and revealed a breakthrough into . . . but some baddies want to use this discovery for their own ends, and thus Joe and Rose—and Nina!—must be killed. Masterfully styled, serious entertainment. These are Koontz's great years. (First printing 600,000; Literary Guild main selection; author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-42526-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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