A fresh, engaging take on a frequently fictionalized disaster.
An alternate history of the Titanic disaster.
Cibrano (Dead Reckoning, 2011) envisions a scenario in which the 1912 sinking of the Titanic wasn’t a tragic accident but part of a sinister plot intended to incite a world war. Two months after the “unsinkable” ship hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic and more than 1,500 people die, former president Theodore Roosevelt requests a meeting with Allan Pinkerton, the businesslike head of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. Roosevelt has information that suggests the ship’s sinking may not have been an accident, and he orders Pinkerton to investigate further. Star detective Frank Dimaio, whose claim to fame is tracking down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia, is assigned to the case, and he and Pinkerton uncover a vast conspiracy that stretches to the highest levels of the British government. The scheme, which combines insurance fraud, espionage and an assassination plot, would be nearly unbelievable if Cibrano didn’t draw it so cleverly from actual historical events. In this counterfactual retelling, the sinking of the Titanic is intended to spark a war among England, the United States and Germany—just as the real-life sinking of the Lusitania led to America’s entry into World War I a few years later. Careful details and well-crafted dialogue help bring the novel’s cast of notable historical figures to life. Roosevelt is all jovial, back-slapping swagger, while financier J.P. Morgan fills the role of nefarious robber baron. Dimaio’s and Pinkerton’s real-life exploits also inform their fictional characters’. The book is not without flaws; for example, the timeline is confusing—at one point, it’s a “warm June midday,” but seemingly just a few days later, there are “colorful parasols parading under the bright midday September sun.” The third-person, present-tense narration is also an odd, sometimes off-putting, choice for a historical novel. That said, this twisty thriller will likely entertain anyone who appreciates a good dose of conspiracy and political intrigue, and it will appeal most to Titanic aficionados.
A fresh, engaging take on a frequently fictionalized disaster.Pub Date: July 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481770569
Page Count: 406
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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