A riveting multigenre tale with sharply drawn characters in a striking futuristic world.
In this debut sci-fi/mystery novel, the latest case for a detective in a dystopian future entails magic, interdimensional aliens, and, quite possibly, vampires.
Tom Holliday’s recruitment into the newly launched Special Crimes Unit is primarily due to his gift. The investigator, who transferred from the Empire City Police Department, uses a supernatural perception that he calls the Insight to close cases. That’s just what retired ECPD Capt. Bill Mahoney needs as head of the SCU—“to solve the unsolvable and inexplicable by any means necessary.” Holliday’s first case involves the body of Vanessa Mallery, completely drained of blood by, according to eyewitnesses, a vampire. The detective’s SCU partner is Deacon Kole, a former Protector (law enforcer) from the Confederate States of Birmingham, one of 52 worldwide enclaves in existence after a nuclear calamity and pandemics ravaged Earth years ago. Holliday and Kole team up with Besim Saranda, a female Vellan; her alien race abandoned its war-devastated world from a parallel dimension to take refuge on human-inhabited Earth. While Holliday readily accepts Vellans and furthermore believes in magic, he’s certain vampires don’t exist. But finding the killer won’t be easy: Cameras at the murder scene were inexplicably disabled, and the two witnesses were high on a hallucinatory drug called Goldjoy. And there’s evidently more to the case than potential vampirism, including a drug lord and baddies meticulously cleaning crime scenes, leaving behind a perceptible lemon scent. Holliday and company will encounter a slew of dangerous individuals as well as a few more bodies before it’s all over. Hartog deftly fuses genres in this entertaining series opener. The novel is first and foremost sci-fi, with a thoroughly detailed future Earth and inventive tech, like Holliday’s new DNA-bonded Superior Military Armament Retaliatory Tool gun that only he can operate. But the story’s tone owes more to classic hard-boiled fiction: Holliday has a dark past (he was once addicted to Goldjoy); the rain never seems to let up; and Kole rarely appears without a smoldering cigarette. Although Holliday is most assuredly not a cynical detective, he’s unquestionably appealing. For example, his nickname, Doc, is not from Wyatt Earp’s gunslinging pal but rather from the investigator’s Ph.D. in classical literature. Moreover, Holliday’s first-person narration is unabashed and often charming: “I’m not afraid of heights, but I do maintain a healthy respect for anything that might get me killed, like angry ex-boyfriends, or falling from a hundred-plus story building.” Other characters shine as well, such as Leyla, Holliday’s shrewd hacker friend, who, as it happens, is capable of magic. As the narrative progresses, the supernatural elements increase, from a fetch, a parasitic “shadow creature,” to an especially formidable man who, through a combination of magic and technology, doesn’t go down easy. The SCU’s case does eventually turn conspiratorial, particularly with the identity of an initially unknown villain named Orpheus, which is a significant twist. Nevertheless, based on the cliffhanger ending, that’s a plot turn that the author plans on picking up in the next series installment.
A riveting multigenre tale with sharply drawn characters in a striking futuristic world.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72671-227-9
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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