An action-packed but melodramatic thriller.
In this novel, the Vatican recruits a Jesuit priest—a former elite soldier—to stop a plot by rogue members of the Roman Catholic Church to spark a nuclear war.
Father Kevin Thrall isn’t your ordinary priest—an ex–Army Ranger, he was once a member of a shadowy paramilitary group called the Grey Associates, which worked under CIA contract. Haunted by the wanton violence of his life, he felt called by God to become a priest and start a new life marked by peace and humility. Now he’s the chaplain at an underfunded school in a tough section of Washington, D.C., and happy to be making a difference in his students’ lives. But he’s unwillingly drawn back into the world of espionage and conflict—he’s summoned to the Vatican in order to handle a delicate and urgent matter, an “immediate crisis which threatens the very core of our Catholic Church.” A secretive group known as Opus Mundi, led by someone cryptically referred to as “the Visitor,” holds a “catastrophic worldview”—the organization believes the church, under the tutelage of false prophets, has been led down the road of liberal decadence in contravention of its core spiritual doctrine. Moreover, the group fears that the church will soon reveal part of a prophecy long kept under wraps—often simply referred to as “the Secret”—that will rock the foundations of the Catholic faith. In order to bring about a reform of the church, Opus Mundi believes it needs an apocalypse and conspires to start a nuclear war in the Middle East in order to manufacture one. Kevin, pursued by assassins, is charged with thwarting the group’s diabolical plans. He must also protect the woman he loves, Katie, who, as a result of his involvement, becomes endangered.
Readers will relish the eventfulness of Tanous’ series opener—there is never a moment’s rest for the plot, which charges ahead indefatigably. The propulsive tale also offers some intriguing details about the spiritual conflicts. But many elements of the thriller are derivative and remain closely hewn to a crowded literary genre: a priest who is an ex-soldier; a dangerously conservative and clandestine religious cult; the Catholic Church under siege; the threat of a worldwide debacle; and a sinister villain with a silly moniker. The protagonist is a familiar character—a deadly soldier-turned-priest who’s profoundly troubled by his brutal past but also perfectly capable of waterboarding an adversary for information. Here, Kevin heavy-handedly reflects on his predicament: “I’m a priest who roughs it up with the best of them. Excites me, that adrenaline. How do I reconcile this with my calling to serve as a priest of God? Does it matter? It’s who I am, what I want. I’m divided, a split personality. I am two, Kevin the brave and fearless warrior, and Father Thrall, the humble servant of God. What’s mind-boggling is that they’re opposites. Kevin, meet Father Thrall. Father Thrall, meet Kevin.” In addition, his “six-foot, lean stature made him attractive to members of the opposite sex,” and he enjoys a peculiar relationship with Katie, whom, before he was a priest, he used to “love to the steady beat of French drums.”
An action-packed but melodramatic thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-947942-06-6
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Liberty Island Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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