by Ramsey Campbell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 1998
British psychothriller in the vein of Campbell’s The Count of Eleven (1992) and Nazareth Hill (1997), with none of his more familiar occult horror and supernatural trimmings. Some nut is killing the happily marrieds around Windsor—perhaps someone insanely jealous of their joys, and clearly someone who has a way of tapping into their home life. Could it be the bland but persistent cab driver who seems unnaturally interested in the private lives of his fares? Or another of the eccentrics on the periphery of the community? The theme of endangered families allows Campbell to display one of his most delectable gifts: writing affectionately about marriage and children while unsettling the reader with subtle suggestions of imminent disaster. Here, he focuses on Geoff and Gail Davenport and their three-year-old son Paul. Geoff, an investigative TV journalist, has just published an exposÇ of mismanaged children’s homes when he begins receiving heavy-breathing wordless phone calls. He suspects that the figure on the other end is his long-vanished older half-brother Ben, a suspicion he reluctantly shares with Gail, who until now had not known of Ben’s existence. Vastly abused as a child, Ben ran off at 18 rather than enter the family firm, and he hasn’t been seen since. Now, Geoff suspects, Ben wants to revive their childhood game of hide-and-seek; this time out, the clues include a letter left under the bedroom rug of a house they were raised in. Geoff resists Ben’s attempts to get him to play, but Ben, of course, isn—t just playing—has in fact become a serial killer. As his crimes pile up, he earns the moniker The Kissing Bandit for the ingenious and gruesome way in which he murders couples. One knows far ahead that Ben’s big moment will come with his kidnap of baby Paul. Ghoulish? You bet, though clever Ben isn’t as fearsome as the savagely moronic Fancy family of Campbell’s 1996 novel, The One Safe Place.
Pub Date: June 11, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-86611-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
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edited by Dennis Etchison ; Ramsey Campbell & Jack Dann
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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