Familiar eco-angst and Covid dread inspire this well-wrought, melancholy survival tale.
A group fleeing post-apocalyptic chaos travels to a survival bunker on a private island in Bennett’s speculative thriller.
A series of devastating plagues and pandemics over six decades has destroyed most of the functioning society in North America (and, possibly, in the rest of the world). In Cascadia, Washington, a houseful of holdouts and refugees has coalesced around Grant, the son of a successful inventor whose ubiquitous, low-maintenance solar devices allow technology to function despite the loss of infrastructure. The household is not immune to attacks by unfriendly have-nots or from the onslaught of Pan4, the deadliest contagion yet, which is spreading across the land. Fleeing an advancing wildfire (climatological menaces like rising sea levels, superstorms, earthquakes, and tsunamis are omnipresent concerns), the group goes to sea in a small boat and makes for “Avalon,” a rocky private island where Grant had the foresight to maintain “Camelot,” a survival shelter. It proves to be a meager, isolated, and claustrophobic haven for the four characters who take turns narrating: There’s Miriam, whose shadowy background includes a prison stay; Grant’s sister, Pearl, an aging novelist whose ailments are increasing; and resourceful doctor Mike, who finds himself falling slowly into the irreversible “zombie” catatonic state that prefigures the end stage of Pan4. Rather than serving up suspense and survivalist prepper action, this bleak tale deals in the fatalistic drama of slow deprivation, entropy, and regret as supplies diminish and safeguards fail. Readers may be reminded of introspective, worst-case-scenario survival sagas like The Mosquito Coast. The narrative is littered with literary references (particularly to The Wind in the Willows, The Phantom Tollbooth, and the works of Tolkien) and distinguished by the author’s brand of future-speak slang (“Puerto de Luz was high civ enough to have service for Mike’s vid to work, at least ’til the hurricane hit”), which avoids lending a too-heavy SF gloss to the proceedings.
Familiar eco-angst and Covid dread inspire this well-wrought, melancholy survival tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 353
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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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