An often enjoyable tale of an unpleasant man.
In Daub’s picaresque adventure novel, set during the 20th century’s two world wars, a German orphan becomes the despotic head of a family in America.
Heinrich von Schatt begins his life inauspiciously. His father is shot and killed by Adolf Hitler in World War I, and his mother subsequently abandons him to an orphanage in Bremerhaven, Germany; she then dies on a freighter headed for Brooklyn, New York. Heinrich grows into a strange boy who inspires fear in others; readers repeatedly receive variations of this ominous judgment: “His soul was dark as the sea herself….” He yearns to become a seafaring captain, constantly reading books on the subject and poring over nautical charts. At 13, he’s no longer obliged to attend school, and he finds a job on the commercial freighter Iron Maiden as first officer. He’s a prodigiously talented seaman and makes a small fortune trafficking contraband. However, in 1936, after he kills a Nazi officer who’s abusing an elderly Jewish man, he must flee. This is only the beginning of Heinrich’s varied adventures, which include running off to New York City in 1943with a young Swedish bride, Ingrid Sandström, against her father’s wishes, and becoming the captain of the USS Flatbushduring World War II. The novel revolves around Heinrich’s life, but the author always keeps him at arm’s length; as a result, the inscrutable protagonist never feels entirely real. However, this is congruent with the fabulist nature of the book—one that’s closer to Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote than a typical bildungsroman. Sometimes, the action has a scattershot quality; time moves at a blurred pace, and readers may feel overwhelmed by the quickness of events. Still, Heinrich emerges as an intriguing figure who’s both indefatigable and imperious, and Daub sometimes portrays these traits humorously, as when Heinrich reacts to the news of his daughter’s birth: “But, Heinrich, isn’t she beautiful?” “Next time I expect a son! This is an order!” Overall, it’s a delightful book about a person who inspires no delight.
An often enjoyable tale of an unpleasant man.Pub Date: July 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781946094049
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Clay Road Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2023
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
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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