by Paul S. Howard ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A few stumbles but a sturdy mystery led by a curiously flawed protagonist.
A plastic surgeon looking into a friend’s murder dives into an underworld of Russian mobsters and biker gangs in this thriller.
Having evaded the Russian Mafia in Paris, Dr. Tedy Merrill opts for hiding among the scores of plastic surgeons in Miami. Surprisingly, Tedy runs into Sophie Carpue, part of the reason Russians had targeted him and who he believed was dead. The two have a conversation, but afterward Sophie steers clear of Tedy. Seems she’s going by the name of Nadya and is always at the side of gangster Ivan Kasparov. To find Sophie again without alerting any Russians, Tedy enlists Michael, a private investigator. Michael assembles a “Motley Crew,” with Tedy’s pal Clint, bartender Zeke, and Zeke’s helper, parolee Sammy. Unfortunately, one of the crew turns up floating off of Virginia Key. Tedy naturally suspects the Russian mob, but there’s also a chance that the murder is related to drugs, and his ensuing investigation entails South Florida biker gangs. Though it’s dangerous business, Tedy can more than hold his own in scuffles with bikers or Russians. Keeping a low profile, however, is no longer feasible, and the surgeon once again ends up in someone’s cross hairs. Howard’s (Perception as Reality, 2015) story begins like a series of vignettes, including tales of assorted patients: sympathetic Precious’ facial deformity and a woman sharing post-surgery meds with her husband. But the search for Sophie effectively grounds the narrative, with the murder ultimately taking the spotlight. The lively tale’s packed with details that sometimes aid in making Tedy fairly unlikable, like listing popular but illegal training substances he uses. Howard, a plastic surgeon himself, makes a convincing argument that those in his profession aren’t always rich (they must pay for malpractice insurance, marketing, etc.) but seemingly contradicts it with Tedy’s Ferrari, $3,000 Italian suits, and preference for carrying $5,000 in cash. The ending delivers a resolution that is confusing, as someone who saves Tedy later wants him dead for a pre-existing reason.
A few stumbles but a sturdy mystery led by a curiously flawed protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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