MacDonald (Don’t Believe a Word, 2016, etc.) scores once again with an apparently hopeless quest for justice even if her...
A woman's determination to use her dying sister’s confession to exonerate an innocent man brings her into the eye of danger.
Blair Butler has returned to her hometown in the Poconos to say goodbye to her older sister, Celeste, who’s in the final days of hospice care. Focused on understanding Celeste’s plans for her 10-year-old son, Malcolm, and making sure their Uncle Ellis doesn’t somehow get custody, Blair is blindsided by a shocking deathbed confession. Celeste admits she lied about facts surrounding the murder of Blair’s childhood best friend, Molly Sinclair, whose body was found in the local woods. Celeste could have given Adrian Jones an alibi if she hadn’t been scared to admit to being with a black boy while she was being raised in a household in which Uncle Ellis proudly displayed his Nazi memorabilia. Blair promises to investigate but doesn’t know where to start. Adrian, now known as Yusef Muhammed, was convicted of Molly’s murder and has been in prison for years. He’s unimpressed with Blair’s promise to seek the truth and free him, and he shuts down her pose as his potential savior when he’s known he was innocent the whole time. Blair turns for help to a childhood acquaintance, disgraced news personality Rebecca Moore, even though Rebecca makes it clear that only the promise of professional accolades will get her involved. Blair’s last hope is cop-turned–private investigator Tom Olson, but when his initial inquiries raise the stakes dangerously, that hope is crushed. Even so, Blair’s still a fighter, and she’s determined that the truth will prevail, though her own efforts in an ongoing investigation may bring her up against the same peril that destroyed Molly.
MacDonald (Don’t Believe a Word, 2016, etc.) scores once again with an apparently hopeless quest for justice even if her climactic chapters veer into a rehash of Emma Donoghue’s Room.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8778-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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
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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