An engaging romantic mystery.
A man with partial memory loss joins the Drug Enforcement Administration in taking down narcos while searching for the mysterious woman he loves in this debut thriller.
New Yorker Juan Del Valle has a potential investor for his sports-related “business idea.” Before he has a chance to present his concept, Juan meets a beautiful woman at a New Jersey mall. Though his dalliances have earned him the nickname Don Juan, he’s smitten with her on an emotional level. Revisiting the mall until finally seeing her again, he learns her name is Angie Hope. She’s married to a cheating, abusive husband who threatens to take away their son if she ever leaves him. Juan and Angie grow close but initially maintain a physical distance, communicating via text. But soon they both want more than the poetry Juan sends her. Unfortunately, Juan’s possible investor, Don Emilio Ramirez, is under DEA investigation. Juan’s eventual meeting with him goes unexpectedly sour, leaving the protagonist hurt and in a two-month coma. Upon awakening, Juan can’t recall the details leading up to his injury. DEA Special Agent Jessie Pichardo, who has investigated Ramirez, recruits Juan, a former Marine, to convince women to turn against their narco husbands or boyfriends. This, of course, requires going undercover for the purpose of seduction, which Juan is familiar with. But after perusing his text messages, he realizes Angie is the love of his life. Since she’s likely tied to a noted cartel member, other cartels may have targeted her. Juan hopes to track down Angie while Jessie suspects someone has “compromised” the DEA.
In this series opener, Geronimo establishes an appealing romance between Juan and Angie. There’s minimal information regarding the abuse she suffers—narrator Juan implies he’s intentionally avoiding the subject—but the couple’s mutual attraction is convincing. Much of their story entails Juan’s poems, both in the narrative and in texts to Angie. While the poetry is sometimes clichéd and repetitive, it’s more often indelible: “I don’t even need to touch you to swerve you into my light.” Juan is a winning protagonist. He has understandable contempt for Angie’s husband, whom he doesn’t know, but Juan acknowledges that his own prior treatment of women was insensitive. Things get more intense as Juan and Angie move toward a physical connection. Not only is Juan anxious over the probability of sex with Angie, but he becomes paranoid as well, sure that her rich husband has someone spying on him. The book’s final third becomes a full-scale thriller. Juan is on a mission and running out of time, and he enlists the help of Matthew, a fellow soldier and cybersecurity specialist who offers his hacking skills to the DEA. Sadly, the story practically sprints to the end, quickly pushing past the operation and summarizing a violent turn with surprising ease. This could be an avenue to explore in the sequel. Geronimo’s digital illustrations add color to the pages as well as mystery, occasionally involving individuals or scenes that readers won’t immediately recognize. A few of these remain unknown by the ending, which teases the second installment.
An engaging romantic mystery. (dedications, acknowledgements, author bio)Pub Date: July 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-830465-2
Page Count: 162
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
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
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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