A historical thriller minus the history.
An Alaska woman is drawn into the web of a murderer when he promises to explain her twin sister’s disappearance in Fleischmann’s debut novel.
It's 1941. Elisabeth Pfautz has moved from Lititz, Pennsylvania, the small German immigrant community of her childhood, to Alaska, where her husband, John, has accepted a job teaching children of the Athabaskan tribe. At first Elisabeth, John, and their precocious 11-year-old daughter, Margaret, adjust well to life in the village of Tanacross. But when Alfred, a substitute mail pilot, flies in, Elisabeth can’t quite identify the root of his strangeness. It’s not just that he once flew missions for the kaiser, claims to have seen spaceships, and picks a very bad time to extol their common German heritage. In periodic dreams, Elisabeth relives the year 1921, when she and her twin sister, Jacqueline, were 11. Jacqueline was obsessed with a man named Jacob, another German Great War veteran, who wrote her letters and gave her an ornate dagger. Then one day, Jacqueline disappeared, and so did Jacob. Now Alfred, the mail pilot, tells Elisbaeth that he holds the key to her sister's disappearance and will disclose her whereabouts—for a price. Alfred murders an Athabaskan man, apparently in cold blood, and is sent to prison in Fairbanks. Through letters and prison visits that arouse John’s ire, Elisabeth is given tasks by Alfred that are increasingly intrusive and risky. Soon she is forced into a stark choice between protecting her current family and reclaiming her past. This is a page-turner, keeping us glued to Elisabeth’s struggles as she tries to turn the manipulations of a psychopath to her own ends. But if it weren't for technological advances that might have obviated its premise, this book could have been set in the present. The World War II milieu is glancingly and unconvincingly evoked. The language, particularly the dialogue, does not even attempt the parlance of the day; instead, it is replete with anachronisms like “You’re venting,” "Give me the bottom line,” and "I am here for you,” to cite only a few. However, the Alaskan setting is vividly detailed.
A historical thriller minus the history.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984-80517-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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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