A laudable showing featuring an unconventional detective who’s impossible to dislike.
Freelance chief financial officer Joe Robbins gets hired by a famed musician to look into a potential scam and becomes embroiled in a murder case in Kelly’s (Hill Country Rage, 2014, etc.) latest series thriller.
It’s a simple task for 37-year-old, Austin, Texas–based financial whiz Joe Robbins to check on an investment to ensure there’s no fraud involved. Sophie Tyler, a country-music star for decades, has invested in a movie and wants to avoid the bad publicity of possibly losing the $2 million she’s already forked over. She asks Robbins, who’s unequivocally one of her fans, to verify that the independent film is legitimate but to do it as quietly as possible. He investigates under the pretense of being part of a security detail for an upcoming Austin music festival—a job he could genuinely handle, as he’s a former boxer. In due time he comes to believe that there’s deception surrounding the investment, and he even pinpoints the person who’s likely behind it. The problem? Cops find that same person bludgeoned to death. Robbins then gets a call from the probable killer, who ominously alludes to the CFO’s ex-wife, Rose, and daughters, Chandler and Callie. The killer may also be following both Robbins and Sophie—a situation that’s further complicated by the pair’s newly sexual relationship. Robbins tries to pin down the murderer’s motive and accomplices by investigating Sophie’s earlier investments; meanwhile, more bodies turn up. This detective tale centers on the protagonist’s skill set; as a result, Robbins makes sure to stay on the investigation’s financial side, but he gets crime-scene highlights from his cop pal, Lt. Rico Carrillo. Kelly’s breezy prose keeps Robbins’ white-collar investigations lively. For example, he uses humor to help clarify varieties of corporate fraud, which Robbins describes as being either like salami (with a criminal slowly taking pieces) or being whole-hog (with a criminal making one big haul). Robbins is shown to be a capable fighter, as well; in one memorable scene he confronts an intruder with whatever’s at his disposal, including kitchen plates. The final act is decidedly more suspenseful as the killer draws nearer; the most unsettling moments are recurring phone calls in which the murderer relates a disturbing amount of knowledge about Joe, his life, and his location.
A laudable showing featuring an unconventional detective who’s impossible to dislike.Pub Date: July 29, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 263
Publisher: Chaparral Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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