An exhilarating exercise in suspense, with perils both natural and human-made.
Two mismatched men fight the elements on a camping excursion gone awry in Brock’s thriller.
Gilbert Willards and Trent Leno, soon to be brothers-in-law, embark on a seemingly innocuous Adirondack wilderness camping trip. The author deftly establishes Trent as the moodier, more intimidating presence and Gilbert as a more timid man who begins to regret accepting his camping invitation. From the opening scene, a canoe launch in which both men seem to be fishing more for takes on each other than for trout, narrative tension and suspense begin to build. The trip devolves as a capsized canoe on Long Lake leads to makeshift fireside camping on a small island, where Trent proceeds to grill Gilbert about his loyalty to his wife, Jeannie. A suspicious Gilbert sleeps with one eye open. Meanwhile, an ominous storm barrels toward the Atlantic coastline, and they awaken to find themselves engulfed in the tempest’s fury. In between the camping scenes, the author fills in a good amount of backstory involving Gilbert’s fumbled involvement with the mob and his incrementally building unease about the confrontational Trent’s suitability as a match for his wife’s sister. Playing out against the majestic peaks and lush valleys of the Adirondack Mountains, Brock’s yarn unfolds at a brisk clip, driven by the men’s will to survive despite the violent whims of Mother Nature. The tension is palpable and built upon the precarious, volatile nature of human relationships as both men fight back the urge to panic (the hungry wildlife doesn’t help) as a devilish, terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues (“He made a show of stretching his arms and yawning, but never took his eyes off of Trent, not needing to be a psychic to see the machinations taking shape behind his cold eyes”). Ultimately, the narrative meets the challenge of keeping the suspense level taut and the details crisp throughout this long novel, maintaining the intensity at a fever pitch from its arresting start to a shocking conclusion readers won’t see coming.
An exhilarating exercise in suspense, with perils both natural and human-made.Pub Date: June 21, 2023
ISBN: 9798987875704
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Bogie Road Publishing, Ltd.
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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