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BAY OF FIRES

Tasmania’s culture, flora and fauna are paramount here—the thriller aspect feels extraneous.

A close-knit beachfront community in Tasmania is threatened by a killer who might be one of the neighbors.

Sarah, 35, a devoted fisherwoman and natural athlete, is staying with her parents at their “shack,” or beach cottage, on the shores of the titular bay. Formerly a foreman at an inland fish farm, the hard-drinking Sarah left her employment after beating up her co-worker and lover, Jake. People assume she was the abused party, and she lets them. The action begins on Boxing Day at the height of Tasmanian midsummer. The badly decomposed body of Anja, a Swiss tourist, has been found near a tidal rock pool that is one of Sarah’s favorite haunts. In fact, Sarah was the last to see Anja alive and now feels guilty she didn’t tell her to avoid the rock pool, knowing someone had fouled it recently with fish remains. Hall, a grizzled reporter for a tabloid, is sent to Bay of Fires to investigate Anja’s murder and its possible links to the earlier disappearance of another young woman. Sarah and Hall form a tentative attachment, but each is too damaged by previous relationships (his wife left him for his best friend) to make a definitive move, even after a drunken one-night stand. Sarah’s ill-advised tryst with Sam, 17-year-old son of a rich American neighbor, further complicates her chances for a normal love life. Number one on the beach-dwellers’ short list of suspects is Roger, an eccentric recluse. However, transient summer campers, a crayfish poacher, the ex-husband of a local lodge owner and even Sarah’s university professor father are all possible culprits. But Gee’s preoccupations are less with the mystery than with the psychological profiles of the members of this ingrown society, such that the whodunit is forgotten for long stretches. Despite graceful writing and well-informed descriptions of fish lore and seascapes, the plot lacks both momentum and menace.

Tasmania’s culture, flora and fauna are paramount here—the thriller aspect feels extraneous.

Pub Date: March 12, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-316-20168-1

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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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THE SILENT PATIENT

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

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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

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