A mildly gripping mix of villains and do-gooders headlined by a seasoned, likable detective who intends to save the day.
A complex thriller involves a kidnapping, vicious murders, and a dedicated team of sleuths.
This debut novel is set in fictional Springtown, where beautiful, statuesque Diane Oliveres has just begun her well-deserved, yearly two-week vacation in the quietude afforded by the rural hamlet. But her cheating husband, Dan, is already busy hooking up with another woman, and a maniacal killer moves in to murder him and his mistress. The culprit, now with two fresh bodies, meticulously stores them deep in the woods hoping for a ransom opportunity. But before he exposes the bodies to the public, the perpetrator needs to find and kidnap Diane for the whole plan to succeed. Like clockwork, Diane inexplicably disappears, and her brother, Brooklyn Police Detective Patrick Malley, is hot on the scene, carefully retracing his sister’s last steps. Alert and anxious, Malley pieces together clues and follows leads to uncover Diane and her husband’s former whereabouts, though he shows much less concern for the womanizing Dan. But a recent crime spree through Springtown, a collection of stolen cars parked deep in the woods, and a violent attack on Malley complicate matters. The bustling plot really begins to gain momentum once the author, who’s also a playwright and singer, establishes a firm grip on the characters anchoring the mystery. Besides expert police investigators Malley and Ben Stone, Nicholas “Papa” Malone, the chief medical examiner for the township’s highly regarded crime lab, appears on the scene, ably assisting the detectives. As the villains up the stakes and release the bodies of Dan and his mistress, their increasing violence puts Malley in grave danger as the number of victims multiplies and the crimes garner widespread FBI attention. Linkletter even makes enough room in his busy plot for Malley and Malone to consummate a passionate love affair. While a good amount of suspense and intrigue permeates the antics, the novel is in dire need of character development and an organization of events and plotlines. But even if one character name gets sloppily interchanged (“Mally” instead of “Malley”), suspense fans should find that this convoluted tale delivers just enough dastardly crimes to keep the pages turning.
A mildly gripping mix of villains and do-gooders headlined by a seasoned, likable detective who intends to save the day.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 18, 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
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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