Generic prose can’t wreck a fast-paced story that doubles as an exploration of the nature of evil.
In Christopher’s mystery thriller, a detective seeks a murderer who forces his victims to confess their worst crimes.
The evil protagonist at the center of Christopher’s potboiler employs a number of aliases but prefers to think of himself as “The Confessor.” Through his first victim, David Kirsch, we learn why he’s called himself The Confessor when he confronts David in private about some hidden secrets. David had set up a shell company to commit financial fraud. “I stole the money,” David concedes, adding, “I told myself I’d pay it back. But I wasn’t going to pay it back.” The Confessor waits as he pens a note of confession, then murders him. This done, he applauds himself for having restored balance to the world and views himself as a righteous vigilante. But that’s not how robbery-homicide detective Logan Hollister sees things. When a second victim—a social media influencer who hawked a “natural” path to a muscular physique, while ingesting trenbolone and testosterone cypionate on the sly—is killed in like manner, Logan begins to suspect that both murders are the work of one person. As Logan seeks to prevent a third killing, The Confessor eyes his next target: Grace Kimball, pastor of a Los Angeles–area megachurch, and a hugely popular speaker and bestselling author. He begins attending her informal Wednesday night meetings, where he meets her without drawing undue attention to himself. The Confessor is confident that an examination of her accounting will reveal that the church has bought bulk shipments of her books, thereby fraudulently manufacturing bestsellers. What if Grace is simply honest, hard-working, and compassionate, to her own detriment? With his mind already made up, The Confessor moves to claim another victim. But will Logan stop him in time?
In a genre that seldom surprises, Christopher cannily upends readers’ expectations. Playing on widespread instinctive aversion to religious hypocrisy, he sets up Grace—pastor, guru, local celebrity—as another fraud deserving of The Confessor’s comeuppance. This strategic choice yields ample dividends. Along the way, readers’ allegiances will surely be challenged, with The Confessor initially drawn as a V for Vendetta–style righter of wrongs. Readers will find it hard not to be invested in Grace’s safety; the dangers surrounding her character have the effect of speeding up the narrative, and they’ll likely race ahead to learn whether she survives her destined encounter with a monster. Christopher’s ability to toy with expectations and emotions compensates for an undistinguished prose style and characters who all speak in the same cadences. (“Twenty-two years of assemblies, Detective,” a pious old lady tells Hollister. “You learn to count a room and find the one who doesn’t want counting.”) The Confessor remains a compelling figure throughout, so convinced of his own moral superiority that he only belatedly realizes how steeped he is in blood. The author skillfully renders the excuses he uses to justify his pursuit of Grace: “He had decided what was true and bent the whole patient machine of himself to proving it.” In a book full of frauds, he is the most believable character in it.
Generic prose can’t wreck a fast-paced story that doubles as an exploration of the nature of evil.Pub Date: July 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798996910601
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.
Jack Ryan Jr. and company race to stop a killer wave in this Tom Clancy thriller.
The ship Meridian Star departs eastern Russia unknowingly carrying a pair of containers with radioactive cesium chloride. The vessel is hijacked and scuttled in Micronesia near the Mariana Trench, and the crew is murdered. A huge insurance claim results, and Jack, an accomplished deep-sea diver who works for Hendley Associates, is there to investigate. The hostile Chinese learn it’s there and want that illicit cargo. Meanwhile, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center discovers a huge, mysterious object in 600 feet of water. At that depth, the pressure is unsurvivable without complex special equipment, which is vintage Tom Clancy. Whatever the strange object is, it’s “not a ship…not a submarine…not an aircraft.” On the side is a faded hammer and sickle and Cyrillic letters that spell Siren. Ryan teams up with Navy divers, and they look for a way to safely enter and explore the object. They discover that the underwater contraption has thermonuclear warheads attached, left and long forgotten by the USSR. If the warheads explode, they could still achieve their apparent purpose—to trigger a tsunami and destroy Guam, which is strategically important to the U.S. The Chinese know it too, and the race is on to take control. The result is plenty of high-stakes undersea action, where death can come from a bullet, a knife, or a sliced air hose. But there’s action on land, too. Navy master diver Carla Bennett and Jack take on a surprise assault in a hotel where Carla shows off stellar fighting skills—better than Jack’s. These two aren’t the only heroes here, as there’s a well-balanced cast of characters, all brave and likable. And of course—of course—where there’s a bomb, there’s a ticking clock.
Nail-biting and pressure-packed.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798217183166
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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