An intense novel that expertly weaves varying perspectives of a singular, life-changing event.
In Alexander’s (North of Here, 2012, etc.) gritty drama, a gunman’s standoff against police constables in a Canadian community has repercussions on numerous lives.
Patrolling the Peacefield area, constables Grant Ambler and Arnold Strauss respond to a call of a possible domestic dispute at an apartment complex. What they find when they get there, however, is an armed man, who shoots Grant while Arnold takes cover with Daniel, a young boy who lives at the complex. The man, whom Daniel calls the General, holds the boy’s mother, Lauren, hostage in his apartment; he also seems to have a limitless arsenal, repeatedly firing out his window and pinning Arnold behind a dumpster. Meanwhile, Grant’s father, Walter, and Arnold’s pregnant wife, Joanne, anxiously watch news coverage of the shooting as Grant, lying on the ground and possibly dying, envisions himself walking in the snow with an enigmatic figure named Mike, unsure of whether or not he’s in the afterlife. The author’s novel deceptively begins like a police procedural; Grant’s little brother, Ronnie, disappeared 10 years ago, the only significant evidence a report of a black car, and Arnold doesn’t seem to like a fellow constable because of the man’s presence during an incident initially referred to as “that night.” Though these two mysteries are ultimately resolved, the plot’s true focus is the General’s bullet-laden rampage, aptly revealing the ways in which it affects the people involved as well as their loved ones. Alexander relays the story through different points of view, from Lauren, who’s stuck with the General and doesn’t know if her son is safe, to Walter, who spends time with his adolescent neighbor Gavin (who supplies the older man with booze and weed) and learns about the shooting on TV. The characters are resoundingly developed and multidimensional. The General, for example, isn’t merely the crazed antagonist; he’s given a thorough, tragic back story as he speaks to Lauren. And Alexander doesn’t provide easy answers, particularly with regard to Grant, whose metaphysical state (he’s following Mike but is actually still wounded at the scene) is deliberately equivocal; Mike may be an angel, a ghost or simply a person who’s cropped up in Grant’s dream. There’s adequate resolution for every character before the story is over, but a few of the answers are left open for interpretation.
An intense novel that expertly weaves varying perspectives of a singular, life-changing event.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1926942735
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2014
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
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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