A well-crafted thriller that manages to be both timely and timeless.
In the fourth book of the Cleary Case Files series, Clark (Third Breath, 2014, etc.) brings back FBI Special Agent Shawn Cleary in a gripping blend of terrorism, serial killers, and even a little romance.
Shawn’s life is in turmoil when this thriller opens. Mitchell Gant is about to go on trial for multiple murders, but his twin brother, Trevor, Shawn’s former partner, is still on the loose. He’s threatened everyone Shawn cares about, so she can’t relax yet: “Over the last six weeks, the feeling never abated, and she believed Trevor Gant lurked in the vicinity, ready to execute his next deadly assault.” Indeed, Trevor’s threat caused Shawn to separate from Nick, the man she loves, in order to keep him safe. To make matters worse, a terrorist cell has weaponized the Ebola virus and is planning to disperse it somewhere in a transportation system. Trevor manages to rig the trial and Mitchell gets off. Later, Shawn goes to arrest Mitchell for another set of murders and a firefight unexpectedly breaks out. This climactic incident leaves Trevor in an even worse frame of mind, but because he’s injured, he’s forced to flee. Shawn is badly hurt herself, but her pursuit of the terrorists brings her and Trevor together one more time. Clark’s greatest gift to readers is her breakneck pacing, which keeps the narrative flying along. Still, it zigs and zags along the way, taking unexpected turns, including the revelation of the terrorists’ ultimate choice of target. She doesn’t give short shrift to characterization, though, especially of Shawn, who cares deeply for those she loves while also being a tough agent near the top of her field. One quibble is that there isn’t much room for more than cameos of some people from previous volumes, including Sgt. Ed Pulaski and the vigilante group Patronus, but there’s still plenty of action and memorable characters to go around. The only real problem is that Clark ties up so many loose ends from earlier books that one wonders what’s left for Shawn to tackle next.
A well-crafted thriller that manages to be both timely and timeless.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2016
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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