An enjoyable, low-key supernatural tale with invigorating, unpretentious vampires.
An English private eye, with help from his vampire friends, tries to stop a serial killer targeting college girls in Dalzell’s (The Last Dream Before You Die, 2012) latest, the second in a supernatural thriller series.
When a female student dies from a heroin overdose, Detective Constable Brian Nolan calls in West Yorkshire PI Jack Bone. Jack, a former cop, has the resources to find what Nolan believes is a serial killer, since four other girls of similar age and background have died the same way over the last seven years. Plus, Jack has a distinct advantage: He’s pals with a family of the Nosferatu—“immortals from which stem the vampire legends.” While dodging assassination attempts (retribution from his copper days), Jack learns of the Candyman, an urban legend about a man who, with the help of drugs, promises college-age girls the path to “ultimate knowledge.” After the PI seems to save the Candyman’s most recent victim just in time, he may have a witness to lead him to the killer—if Jack can keep her alive long enough. Dalzell’s multigenre novel skillfully fuses action and the supernatural, best exemplified by a set of twins, vampire Mina and human Lucy, who’s also Jack’s intern. Mina fights with an apparently boundless hypnotic ability, while Lucy—an almost-200-year-old immortal whose Nosferatu genes aren’t “switched on”—excels with basic fisticuffs: A thug who stupidly puts his hand on her winds up with a broken jaw and fewer teeth. Despite Jack’s profession, there’s very little in the way of a detective story, as Jack is too dependent on his vampire partners; even Stanislav, who works for Eugenie (Mina and Lucy’s great-grandmother), dispatches gangsters gunning for Jack and does some research for the Candyman case. Still, Jack’s determination is unparalleled, and his casual acceptance of the Nosferatus’ incredible powers makes the paranormal seem practical, maybe even possible. For example, in the book’s best scene, Mina walks Jack through his own honeymoon memory while, in reality, Jack undergoes a particularly painful experience: “I brought you into this simulacrum by hypnosis to let you escape from what we had to do to get you through the narrows,” she tells him. There’s an abundance of references to Dalzell’s previous book, and the author relays plenty for clarification, such as the origin of Jack’s relationship to the vamps, without excessively outlining the entire story.
An enjoyable, low-key supernatural tale with invigorating, unpretentious vampires.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497424654
Page Count: 434
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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