Readers will gladly lose themselves in this novel’s sense of foreboding.
An obsessed detective seeks revenge upon three men for his brother’s drowning death in Cioffari’s (Dark Road, Dead End, 2016, etc.) thriller.
Danny Baker, Charlie Romano, Johnny Whalen, and Tim Mooney once called themselves “the Renegades.” Five years ago, they all tried to swim across a channel called the Bronx Kill, along with Julianne Regan, whose attention Danny and Charlie were vying for. But the current was too strong, and only three people stepped out of the water; police fished out Tim’s body the following day, but never found Julianne’s. Still, the remaining trio’s reunion in the present-day Bronx should have been a happy one; Johnny, who left the seminary, is marrying his longtime girlfriend, Lorraine. Unfortunately, Tim’s detective brother, Tommy Mooney, is making them all anxious, as he relentlessly questions them about the fateful night years before. Tommy is positive that at least one Renegade is somehow responsible for his brother’s demise, and he further proposes that Julianne’s body wasn’t recovered because she made it across the channel alive. One thing is unmistakable: Tommy wants to mete out some kind of punishment. But after Charlie is attacked in what initially seems to be a gang initiation, he, Danny, and Johnny guess that Tommy was actually behind it. Eventually, they must all confront a bleak memory. Cioffari incorporates a sturdy mystery into his story—what exactly transpired at the Kill isn’t revealed at the outset—but it’s the brooding atmosphere that truly packs a punch. The author fills the pages with recurring images that act as reminders of impending menace: Tommy’s Mercury Marquis (ominously identified as “the black Merc”); the aforementioned Kill; and Charlie’s bar, the MoonGlow, which alludes to the Mooneys and particularly Tim’s nickname, “the Moon.” There are countless unnerving moments, such as when Johnny swears that he’s seen his dead friend in the flesh, or when Tommy claims that he has a witness to the alleged crime. Still, Cioffari allows ample room to flesh out his characters, particularly Danny, who shares a few sublime, emotional scenes with his widower father.
Readers will gladly lose themselves in this novel’s sense of foreboding.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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