A gritty, action-stuffed, well-considered thriller with a gun-toting clergyman.
an>In Keating’s (An Advent for Religious Liberty, 2012, etc.) thriller, a formidable pastor’s trip to Las Vegas takes a nasty turn when masked men kidnap his wife.
Long Island Pastor Stephen Grant and his wife, Jennifer, are Vegas-bound to attend a conference at Jennifer’s alma mater, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They reluctantly agree to stay at a casino hotel owned by Dixon Shaw, Jennifer’s estranged father who had cheated on her mother. Vegas immediately seems shady; two incognito men lurk near the couple. One, Gil Rice, blames Shaw for the presumed murder of missing son Ollie; the other, Eric Clark, was busted by Grant in a smuggling operation when both were CIA agents. A vengeance-minded individual may be the one who spearheaded the eventual abduction and ransom of Jennifer. Grant, however, who in addition to being ex-CIA is also a former SEAL, won’t sit idle while someone holds his wife hostage. The protagonist is the quintessential antihero: he’s a good man respected by his peers at St. Mary’s Lutheran Church but is infuriated by the evil of others. Grant may or may not kill before the story’s finished, but he’s unquestionably wrought with guilt over his murderous impulses. Action scenes flood the novel, particularly once Grant gets help from old CIA cohort Paige Caldwell, who comes complete with skills, weapons, and other men. The story stretches plausibility on occasion, like when FBI agents, who’ve tracked down the kidnappers’ possible location, bring the abductee’s husband along for the ride and give him a gun. Grant, meanwhile, may be flawed as a man of God, but Keating ensures that readers know the protagonist isn’t the norm. A decidedly more wholesome pastor, for example, is back in Long Island, advising a woman who may be losing her faith after her husband’s accidental death.
A gritty, action-stuffed, well-considered thriller with a gun-toting clergyman.Pub Date: May 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4995-1417-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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